D R rj .GriA'D.iD'O; .T-S
A’i ElOV#.
HUMAN-i®''NGS
'The Story of
Our Billion-Dollar Drug Racket
HOW WE CREATED IT AND
HOW WE CAN WIPE IT OUT
. By
HENRY SMITH WILLIAMS, M.D., B.Sc., LL.D.
With a Statement of the Narcotics Problem
By
HON. JOHN M. COFFEE
of Washington
(Reprinted from the Congressional Record)
Washington, D. C.
SHAW PUBLISHING COMPANY
1938
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PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
FOR THE PUBLISHERS BY KINGSPORT PRESS, INC.
es -? r/
T/ze Author
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/I
T his is the one-hundred-and-nineteenth published book —
to say nothing of a multitude of magazine articles of the
widest medical and scientific import — of this distinguished
scientist, biologist, psychiatrist and physician. Taken in con-
junction with his researches and a medical practice that has
included personal attendance upon ten thousand patients, it
may easily be said that Dr. Henry Smith Williams, always
athletic, dynamic and indefatigable, has accomplished the
equivalent of the life-time work of three able and busy
scientific men.
The clarity and charm of his style has been matched, if ever,
by few medical writers. It was once said of Dr. Henry Smith
Williams that he knew more about the chemistry and biology
of the blood cells than any other man in America. He once
^ gave ten years to an intensive study of cancer, with startling
vi and most constructive results, and perhaps the most important
^of his medical works, reporting these researches, was “The
Proteomorphic Theory and the New Medicine” (1918), which
^ you will find in medical libraries.
3 His works include “The Great Astronomers” and “The
? Biography of Mother Earth,” both with his own illustrations,
.^“Luther Burbank — His Life and Work” (12 volumes), “Mech-
i 5 ^anism of Immunity,” “The Historians’ History of the World”
^ (25 volumes), “Civilization” (in Encyclopedia Britannica,
1910), a monumental “History of Science” (31 volumes) (with
. his distinguished brother, Dr. Edward Huntington Williams)
and other medical and scientific works too numerous to men-
^tion.
• • »
m
IV
The Author
I
Dr. Henry Smith Williams has spent five years in the
investigation and study of the problem presented in the present
volume which is, incidentally, the first complete and most ;
authentic exposition of the subject of narcotic addiction in its
various phases in the United States ever published. What is ■ '
particularly significant, in this connection, is the fact that the
United States is the only country in the world, outside of China,
where narcotic addiction is a serious problem — and that for " »
reasons well given by the author in these pages.
The Publishers
3
Trologue
T he illicit drug traffic — quite literally a billion-dollar
racket — is essentially an American institution. There is
nothing like it elsewhere in the world.
It is the direct outgrowth of a Federal Law — called the Har-
rison Act — which, paradoxically, has never been enforced.
What has been enforced — ^with dumbfounding effects — is a
Code developed without warrant of law by subordinates of the
Treasury Department (Commissioner of Internal Revenue,
Deputy Commissioner of the Narcotic Division of the Prohibi-
tion Unit, Commissioner of Prohibition) and fostered in later
years by the Commissioner of Narcotics.
This Code directly developed and effectively maintained the
illicit drug racket, in all its ramifications. The story of this
development constitutes one of the weirdest chapters in Ameri-
can history, and the very finest example of the amazing para-
doxicalities of Bureaucratic Government. Emanating from an
executive department, without legislative warrant, it was un-
constitutional (N R A decision) in its essence. It was doubly
unconstitutional because it imposed exactions that the Federal
Congress itself has absolutely no power to impose (AAA
decision) .
But this did not prevent the Narcotic Code (herein for cause
dubbed the “Blackmail Code”) from operating effectively, for
(a) the establishment of the billion-dollar illicit drug traffic;
(b) the transformation of a vast company of law-abiding
citizens into outcasts and hopeless derelicts and criminals; and
(c) the persecution, even unto death, of hundreds of thousands
of pitiful victims of disease, who were denied — as no other
vi Prologue
group of unfortunates in all history have been denied — the
solace of medical attention.
To the best of my knowledge and belief, the pages of this
book contain the first record that has ever been printed in any
medium of the bald truth about the origin and development
of these Code-engendered, Law-defying Government-fostered
atrocities. Were it not an adequately documented record, it
might well be thought unbelievable. It is unbelievable. Yet it
is true; and its documented validity is doubly attested by the
consideration that no flight of imagination, no inventive in-
spiration, could have conceived a situation of such stupid
fantasticality.
“Some day,” said an editorial in American Medicine a few
years ago, “the whole sordid story of the exploitation of the
drug addict will be written.”
This is that story.
Qontents
PAGE
Congressional Statement of the Narcotics Problem by
Hon. John M. Coffee, of Washington (From the
Congressional Record) xiii
Introduction — ^Public Enemies in High Places . . xxiii
BOOK I
C'^uel, "Rut TSiot Unusiud
CHAPTER
I. The American Inquisition 3
IL Ambulatory Addicts 15
III. Code Versus Clinic 23
IV. Roll of Honor 31
Care of Pathological Narcotic Addicts,
Statement by Mayor Frank L. Shaw of -Los
Angeles 39
V. Hypocrisy of the Code 40
VI. “Medical Martyrs” 45
VII. Just a Letter 51
VIII. Can You Believe? 55
BOOK II
Execution by Qode
IX. A Few Typical Cases 65
X. What Would You Do? 74
XI, The Murder of George Christensen ... 81
vii
viii Contents
CHAPTER page
XII. Execution by Code 89
XIII. A Game of Bluff 97
XIV. Addicts Are Human Beings, not Criminals 104"
BOOK ni
‘Blackfnail Qode and the Doctors
XV. 20,000 Innocent Physicians Branded as
Felons 113
XVI. Evolution of the Blackmail Code . . .115
XVII, Physician Versus Dope Peddler .... 120
XVIII. The Blackmail Formula 128
XIX. A Terrorized Profession 132
XX. Legal Prescriptions by the Million . 139
XXL A Word about Stool Pigeons 143
XXII. The Physician as Scapegoat 146
XXIII. Ignorance and Fanaticism ...... 152
XXIV. A Kindergarten Exercise 156
Interlude — Ipso Facit) Racketeers . 158
book rv
Ipso Facto Racketeers in ^Action
XXV. Official Interpretations 165
XXVI. Tricks of the Trade 172
XXVII. Manhandling the Law 179
XXVIII. The Power of a Fixed Idea 189
XXIX. Hobson’s Choice 195
XXX, Contempt of Supreme Court 201
XXXI. The Solicitor General Does His Bit . 207
'^'^DCXIL Marihuana — New Opportunity for Rack-
eteers 211
Contents
IX
BOOK V
'From Star Chamber to Qourt of Justice
CHAPTER PAGE
XXXIII. Star Chamber 219
XXXIV. Dubious Ethics 225
XXXV. Three Recent Episodes 229
XXXVI. One Judge Reads the Law 235
XXXVII. Hall of Justice 243
XXXVIII. Judge Yankwich Interprets the Law . 251
XXXIX. The Reason Why 259
XL. Some Practical Suggestions 266
Appendix — H. J. Res. 642, a Bill to Provide
FOR a Survey of Narcotic-Drug Condi-
tions in the United States 271
Qartoons
By Edward Huntington Williams, M.D.
PAGE
What makes the doctor a criminal 7
The joke was on the doctor 13
What the billion-dollar buzzard feeds on 35
“By a jury of his peers” 57
On behalf of the buzzard 71
Opium for the children 88
The doctor versus the dope-peddler 101
The billion-dollar highway . . 137
The marihuana situation 213
Reprinted from
OTmtgrmwtml llfrtttd
SEVENTY-FIFTH CONGRESS, THIRD SESSION
Vol. 83
WASHINGTON, WEDNESDAY, JUNE 15, 1938
No. m
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
Wednesday, June 16. 1938
djay of Tuesday, June U,
An Investigation of the Narcotic Evil
EXTENSION OF REMARKS
OF
HON. JOHN M. COFFEE
OF WASHINGTON
IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
Tuesday, June 14, 1938
A DISCUSSION OF HOUSE JOINT RESOLUTION 642 , TO PROVIDE FOR A SURVEY
OF NARCOTIC-DRUG CONDITIONS IN THE UNITED STATES BY THE PUBLIC
HEALTH SERVICE. INTRODUCED BY MR. COFFEE OF WASHINGTON, APRIL 7 ,
1938 . REFERRED TO THE COMMITTEE ON INTERSTATE AND FOREIGN COM-
MERCE AND ORDERED PRINTED
Mr. COFFEE of Washington. Mr. Speaker, this bill proposes an
appropriation for making a survey of narcotic-drug conditions in the
United States.
A question naturally arises as to why such a survey is desirable. The
answer cannot be given without first gaining an inkling of the narcotics
situation. We are especially concerned with the economic aspects of the
situation.
XIV
Congressman Codec's Statement
ECONOMIC ASPECTS OF NARCOTICS
It is estimated by the American Association on Drug Addictions, of
Seattle, that the annual cost to the taxpayers of this country of narcotics
addiction, chiefly opiate addiction, is of the order of §2,735,000,000, or
about $80 per family. It is claimed that this is a needless burden im-
posed on the people, not by conditions inherent in the problem of drug
addiction, and not by the operation of law, but by the mistaken interpre-
tations of law made by the Federal Narcotics Bureau.
If this claim is justified, the Narcotics Bureau stands as the costliest
bureau or governmental department in the world, and the Commissioner
of Narcotics ranks as far and away the costliest man in the world. He
and his predecessor, a prohibition officer, have been in control of the
narcotics situation for 17 years.
PURPOSE OF PROPOSED INVESTIGATION
The purpose of the investigation proposed in this bill is to evaluate
these claims, with the expectation that if they are found valid, action will
be taken speedily to reform the evils of the situation.
TWO TYPES OF LAWS TREATING OF NARCOTICS
There are two types of Federal laws supposedly governing the narcotics
situation: (1) An import law providing that crude opium and coca
leaves may be imported under certain conditions, but forbidding the
import of any refined products or alkaloids of either drug; and (2) the
Harrison Special Tax Act of 1914, commonly called the Harrison Nar-
cotic Act, which imposes a head tax on all legitimate handlers of narcotic
drugs, and (as revised in 1918) a special tax also on the narcotic drugs
manufactured from the imported crude substances.
The first of these laws I shall not consider at the moment beyond
pointing out the obvious extreme difficulties encountered in the endeavor
to prevent smuggling of products of such small bulk as the alkaloids,
morphine, heroin, and cocaine, the dosage of which is measured in grains
or fractions of a grain. In another connection it w'ill be noted that the
opium alkaloids in particular are admittedly smuggled into the country
constantly to the extent of many tons annually. It will be noted also that
the smuggling racket was a direct outgrowth of the operation of the
other narcotics law, the Harrison Act.
HARMFUL EFFECT OF HARRISON ACT
In examining the Harrison Special Tax Act we are confronted with
the anomaly that a law designed (as its name implies) to place a tax on
XV
Congressman Codec's Statement
certain drugs, and raise revenue thereby, resulted in reducing enor-
mously the legitimate importation of the drugs in question, while de-
veloping a smuggling industry not before in existence. That, however,
is only the beginning. Through operation of the law, as interpreted,
there was developed also, as counterpart to the smuggling racket, the
racket of dope peddling; in a word, the whole gigantic structure of the
illicit-drug racket, with direct annual turn-over of upward of a billion
dollars.
PITY THE POOR ADDICT
Incidental effects were the persecution of perhaps a million victims of
the diseased condition known as drug addiction, the great majority of
whom had been law-abiding, self-respecting, self-supporting citizens, but
who now became human derelicts and were thrust by thousands into
jails and prisons simply because they could not legally secure the medi-
cine upon which depended their integrity of mind and body. There were
no narcotics prisoners in Federal prisons prior to the passage of the
Harrison Act. Ten years later, more than one-third of all convicts in
Federal prisons were narcotic cases.
The total number of such Federal narcotic prisoners during the period
since the Harrison Act began to operate as potent maker of criminals is
of the order of 75,000, with aggregate prison sentence of upward of
100,000 years. No other statute ever operated to make criminals on any
comparable scale.
MISINTEIUPRETATION AT FAULT — NO INHERENT DEFECTS IN BILL
Let me repeat, however, that no such dire effects were inherent in the
Harrison Act itself. The social and economic disaster involving an army
of sick people came about through bureaucratic action which is claimed
to have been based on misinterpretation of the law — misinterpretation
which is alleged to have set at defiance the dear decisions of the Supreme
Court — illustrating incidentally the often overlooked fact that the high
tribunal is purely advisory in function, having no power whatever to
enforce its decisions.
COURTS HOLD HARRISON ACT TO BE A REVENUE BILL
Let US get down to cases. The essence of the Harrison Act is the
provision that no slightest modicum of any narcotic drug shall get to the
ultimate consumer in any manner whatsoever except at the hands of a
registered physician — ^we may overlook dentists and veterinary surgeons
for the present purpose. There is no reference to the uses of narcotics in
the law, and no reference to drug addicts or drug addiction. The Su-
XVI
Congressman Coffee's Statement
preme Court has ruled — Linder case, 1925; Nigro case, 1928, and so
forth — that the law is a pure revenue measure, and that Federal law has
no control over the practice of a profession — reiterated, with specific
citation of Linder case, in the A. A. A. decision of 1936.
INHUMANITY TO ADDICTS
The Narcotics Bureau ignores these decisions and assumes authority
to prevent physicians from even the attempt to cure narcotic addicts
unless the patients are under forced confinement. The addicts number,
by the very lowest estimate, at least 100,000. The institutions that will
receive them as patients are almost nonexistent. It follows that the
prohibitory mandate of the Narcotics Bureau effectively denies treatment
to the vast majority of narcotic addicts.
A GRE.\T INJUSTICE OF MODERN TIMES
It is believed that this is the first instance in all history of the denial of ,
medical treatment to a class of cirizens of whatever status or capacity.
The fact that the Supreme Court has declared that narcotic addicts are
diseased and proper subjects for medical treatment makes the action of
the Narcotics Bureau peculiarly paradoxical. The paradox is emphasized
by the further fact that the Federal Government has erected a beautifully
equipped hospital for treatment of narcotic addicts at Lexington, Ky.
Most of the patients arc first condemned to prison, then transferred to
the hospital. Voluntary cases may also be received. But the total ca-
pacity of the institution is only al^ut 1,000. At least a hundred such
institutions would be required to meet the needs of the existing addict
population — 5 or 10 times that if the newer estimates of that population
are valid.
ADDICTION, ONCE DEVELOPED, IS CHRONIC
The erection of a hundred or a thousand such institutions, however,
would by no means solve the narcotics problem. Addiction, once de-
veloped, is a very chronic condition. It is admitted by the authorities,
including the narcotics commissioner, that very few "cures” result from
incarceration for a 1-ycar period. It has been suggested that a 5-ycar
segregation is the least that can be expected to restore the average addict.
The idea of incarcerating even a hundred thousand, let alone a million,
unfortunates for a term of 5 years is rather startling — especially consider-
ing that they are sick people, for the most part of average respectability
and moral status, not markedly handicapped by their infirmity.
UNIVERSAL IMPRISONMENT OF ADDICTS IMPOSSIBLE, HE.^RTLESS, AND UNSOUND
In any event, such effort would be mere temporizing. Even if the
miracle of curing all existing addicts w’erc effected in 5 years, we should
Congressman Codec’s Statement xvii
be no better off, because the dope peddler, deprived of his present market,
would instantly set to work to develop a new market, and a perennial
new crop of addicts would be in evidence.
THE REMEDY IS SIMPLE
But what is the alternative? Fortunately, the answer is simple. If
the Harrison Act were allowed to operate as was designed, all victims of
drug addiction disease — “narcotoxia” it is technically termed — ^would
come under medical supervision; and, on prescription, would be sup-
plied with whatever medicine they need at slight cost at the drug stores.
Morphine which the peddler sells for a dollar a grain would be supplied,
of pure quality, for 2 or 3 cents a grain. The peddler, unable to meet
such a price, would go out of business — the illicit narcotic drug industry,
the billion-dollar racket, would automatically cease to exist.
That much may be stated with absolute certainty. Almost as certain
is it that the army of narcotics derelicts would be reduced to the vanish-
ing point. Courts would cease to be crowded with delinquents who
owe their downfall to the necessity of meeting the dope peddlers’ ex-
orbitant demands. Jails would be emptied; Federal prisons would lose
a quarter or a third of their population. The billion dollar — or two and
three-quarter billion dollar- — tax on the public would be eliminated.
Why should there be any argument against permitting the law to
operate, since such beneficent results seem inevitable? Here we come
to the crux of the matter. The opposition comes from a small coterie of
persons in authority, who are in position to benefit by the status quo.
These persons will be brought into the open by such a congressional
investigation as this bill proposes. There will then be opportunity to
subject to official scrutiny the records of these opponents of law reform.
LET US FIND OUT THE CAUSE OF THIS SITUATION
Specifically, there will be opportunity to question the Commissioner
of Narcotics — and to observe how he may endeavor to justify the activi-
ties that cost the American people not far from $3,000,000,000 a year, and
give the Commissioner himself status as the costliest man in the world.
It seemed necessary to make these general comments, if for no other
reason, to explain why this bill (H. J. Res. 642) proposes to entrust the
investigation and survey of the narcotics situation to the Surgeon General
of the United States Public Health Service, and not to the Bureau of
Narcotics.
THE HARRISON LAW AS INTERPRETED
The Harrison Special Tax Act of 1914 required all handlers of nar-
cotic drugs, opium and coca leaves and their products and preparations.
xvm
Congressman Codec's Statement
to register with the Commissioner of Internal Revenue, and pay an an-
nual tax of 51. Narcotic drugs could be transferred only on presentation
of a signed order form issued by the Commissioner of Internal Revenue;
but, physicians, dentists, and veterinary surgeons were exempt from this
requirement, and druggists could issue narcotics on the prescriptions of
these exempt professional persons; provided only that the prescriptions
were issued for legitimate patients, “in the course of professional practice
only.” The writers of prescriptions were to keep duplicates or copies in
their offices; and the original prescriptions, after being filled, were to be
kept for 2 years on file at the pharmacy. No record need be kept by the
practitioners of narcotic drugs directly administered to patients whom
they professionally attended.
TTiat is all. There is no mention of the uses of narcotic drugs; no
reference to addiction or any other malady or condition, and no sugges-
tion as to meaning or interpretation of the words “legitimate,” “patient,”
or “professional practice.” Nor is there the slightest hint as to the quali-
fications that render any person eligible to register as a physician, dentist,
veterinary surgeon, or pharmacist. Presumably the lawmakers fully
understood that professional eligibility to handle drugs is a matter for
State supervision and control, and one over which Federal law has no
jurisdiction. It is not even specifically stated that a physician may use his
own prescription blanks; it is merely stated that he is not required to use
the pnnted order forms issued by the Commissioner of Internal Revenue,
which all other handlers of the drugs must use.
LATER chances IN LAW AS INTERPRETED
Subsequent amendments (1919 and 1926) modified the annual head
tax (establishing a graded s<^c ranging from (34 to $3, and then shift-
ing the minimum — ^for physicians — back to $1), and provided for a
stamp tax of 1 cent an ounce; no drugs to be dispensed to the ultimate
consumer except “in or from" a package bearing the revenue stamp.
But the amendments did not otherwise concern the pharmacist or the
physician, which is equivalent to saying that the Harrison Act, in its
relation to the professional activities of the persons who alone are author-
ized to dispense narcotic drugs to the consumer remains absolutely un-
modified since its enactment in 1914. Any changes in operation of the
law have not been due to legislative action, but to judicial or bureaucratic
interpretation. These changes have been so notable, however, that the
net result has been, as to every essenli;il, almost diametrically opposed to
what the proponents of the act planned and hoped for.
FACTS OF NARCOTICS PROBLEM ARE DISQUIETING
For example, (1) direct revenues have decreased instead of increasing.
XIX
Congressman Codec's Statement
and an indirect burden of cost has been multiplied a hundredfold; (2)
smuggling of narcotic drugs has increased from negligible pounds of
smoking opium to scores of tons of morphine and heroin; (3) a negligible
group of peddlers of cocaine in prohibition districts has become an army
of peddlers of morphine and heroin; (4) a scattered company of drug
addicts, a majority of whom were respectable, self-supporting citizens,
neither financially nor morally hampered by their infirmity, has become
a multitude of derelicts, victims of the dope peddler and the narcotic
agent, and denied all medical attention; (5) whereas formerly a con-
siderable number of addicts were cured by sedulous medical treatment,
such treatment could no longer be attempted, and every case of addiction
became practically hopeless from inception (including large numbers of
soldiers returned from the Great War); (6) the dope peddler, whose
very existence was due to the law as interpreted, was and is naturally
diligent to increase his market so that the addict population has probably
doubled, if not tripled, since the Harrison law was enacted; (7) under
stress of necessity, being denied legitimate access to the medicine they
require, narcotic addicts as a class become law breakers (since every
purchase constitutes a felony), and soon the jails and prisons were
crowded with narcotic prisoners (in Federal prisons alone narcotic cases
advanced from none in 1915 to 2,569 in 1925); physicians were so
hampered in their use of the most indispensable of medicines that most
of them refuse to treat drug addicts even for maladies other than addic-
tion disease, yet, even so, upward of 25,000 physicians have been re-
ported for criminal violation of the Harrison Act, and about 5,000 have
been convicted in Federal courts, and either heavily fined or imprisoned,
the irony of the situation being enhanced by the fact that, with rare
exceptions, these convicted physicians had assiduously attempted to con-
form to the law and to every regulation of the narcotics authorities.
Such have been some of the unpredicted consequences of operation of
the Harrison Act, as interpreted.
AIMS OF MY PROPOSED INVESTIGATION
Perhaps a few words should be added about the specific aims of the
proposed investigation, as stated in the resolution now before the House
— ^line 10, page 2, to line 10, page 3. Information is desired as to —
(a) The extent of unlawful activities with respect to narcotics and the
number of persons connected with such activities.
NARCOTICS WIDESPREAD TINCTURING OF OFFICIAL LIFE
Comment: The extent to which unlawful activities in the distribution
of narcotics have invaded official life is cogently suggested by several
recent happenings:
XX
Congressman Codec's Statement
HANSON AFFAIS IN NEVADA
First- The arrest, prosecution, and conviction of the chief Federal
narcotics agent for the State of Nevada — Chris Hanson — and a confeder-
ate tvho was formerly a revenue ofi&cer, for direct dope peddling and
connivance with a gang of Chinese racketeers in June 1937. Hanson
was sentenced to 10 years in the Federal penitentiary at McNeill Island
and a fine of $9,000, It is to be noted that Hanson was chief Federal
narcotics agent at Los Angeles, Calif., at the time of the arrest and prose-
cution there of physicians, through which the closure of the beneficent
narcotics clinic of the county medical association and board of health
was effected — and the 75 rehabilitated patients thrust back into the hands
of the dope peddlers. Incidentally, it should be noted that the United
States attorney who cooperated with the narcotic agents in the prosecu-
tions in question was ousted from his position for his action in this
affair, along with the two assistants direedy involved, one of whom was
held for contempt of court because of his reprehensible actions. The
character of the associates of the Federal narcotics agent is further evi-
denced by the arrest and imprisonment of another officer — ^investigator
for the State medical board of examiners — ^who had active share in the
frame-up of clinic physicians.
It is perhaps not without significance to note that no Federal bureau
or agency had any share in the initial investigations through which
Chief Federal Agent Hanson and the former customs officer were en-
trapped at Reno. On the other hand, the Commissioner of Narcotics
took an active hand in the questionable proceedings at Los Angeles
which led to the arraignment of the assistant United States attorney for
contempt of court. And he is on record as regarding that case as the
most important in the history of the Narcotics Bureau, with its record of
many thousand cases. His dubious panisanship amounted to effective
championship of the dope peddlers — ^and seems inexplicable on any
other basis.
ACTION AT ZURICH
Second. The demonstrated participation of Federal narcotics agents in
the illicit drug racket is suggestively supplemented by the reported arrest
at Zurich May 30, 1938, of a former Peruvian diplomat said to be the
head of a colossal international dope ring. The incident is perhaps only
a grandstand play — ^in view of the fact that the authorities of the League
of Nations are conceded to have known the names of the important
narcotics smugglers for years past, and have argued among themselves
as to the advisability of warning various governments against them.
But whatever the motive for the present arrest, the fact that the suspect
XXI
Congressman Co^ee*s Statement
is a former diplomat gives authenticity to the recently published state-
ment of a French criminologist that enormous quantities of contraband
narcotics are shipped into America as part of the baggage, exempt from
inspection, of officials in the Diplomatic Service.
Third. Whatever the manner of smuggling, the aggregate amount of
narcotics — in particular morphine and heroin — involved in the illicit
traffic is enormous. At a congressional hearing on the Porter bill, which
resulted in the act authorizing the building of two narcotics hospitals —
one now in operation at Lexington, Ky. — Colonel Nutt, then in charge
of the Narcotics Division of the Prohibition Bureau, estimated the addict
population at a minimum of 100,000 and the daily average ration of
morphine at 8 grains. He expressed the opinion that all but a negligible
quantity — 1 or 2 percent at most — of the legitimate supply of narcotics
was handled legitimately by physicians, admitting, therefore, that prac-
tically the entire supply of the addicts was smuggled into the country, and
sold, at f 1 a grain, by dope peddlers.
COLONEL NUTT’s TESTIMONY
He made no estimate of the number of such illicit traffickers. But a
simple calculation shows that by his estimate the morphine, or its
equivalent, consumed by 100,000 addicts on the daily 8-grain basis would
amount to 292,000,000 grains a year, or more than 20 tons. Recall,
please, that this was a minimum estimate. It is perhaps not very impor-
tant to find out how many peddlers are required to dispose of such
quantities of the illicit product. But it is of salient importance to recall
that there was no smuggling and no peddling of opiates before the passing
of the Harrison Act, and that there would be none now if addicts were
permitted, under medical supervision, to secure the drug they imperi-
ously need, at a legitimate price at a pharmacy.
ENORMOUS PROFIT IN DRUG PEDDLING
Smuggling and peddling of drugs are carried on for profit. There
would be no market for morphine at a dollar a grain if it could be se-
cured, of pure quality, legally, for 1 or 2 cents a grain as it could be be-
fore the prohibitive law was enacted; and as it still could be if the
narcotics authorities did not substitute a bureau created “regulation” for
Federal law.
One salient purpose of the proposed investigation will be to ascer-
tain why certain narcotics authorities perennially champion the “regula-
tion” which supports the dope peddler and keeps the narcotic racket in
being.
So much for the first-suggested subject for investigation. The second
(b) is complementary, concerning the number of addicts in the United
xxii Congressman Codec’s Statement
States, with further question as to the availability of various types of
treatment.
CAN ADDICTS SECURE ADEQUATE MEDICAL TREATMENT?
Here the thing of real importance is suggested in the concluding clause.
It would be of interest to know the number of addicts — estimates range
from 100,000 to more than a million — but the really vital question is,
whether addicts, be they few or many, are given opportunity to secure
medical treatment — such opportunities as are open to the victims of every
other type of malady or perverted condition, regardless of whether we
term it disease or habit or perversion.
That statement is perhaps not quite accurate. As a matter of fact, we
know that victims of narcotics addiction (unlike alcohol addicts or
nicotine addicts) arc not permitted to receive treatment like other suf-
ferers. The question at issue is. Why are they not {.wnnitted this ele-
mental right?
SUFFERER SHOULD BE MERCIFULLY HANDLED
The obvious answer is that if this were permitted, the dope peddler
would be put out of business, and the entire illicit drug racket would
vanish. But that answer only leads to the question; Why should persons
in authority w’ish to keep the dope peddler in business and the illicit drug
racket in possession of its billion-dollar income?
It will be obvious, I think, that this is the really significant question at
issue. I submit that an official answer to that question would be not
merely of interest, but of truly vital impwrtance to every American citi-
zen. If we, the representatives of the people, are to continue to let otir
narcotics authorities conduct themselves in a manner tantamount to up-
holding and in effect supporting the billion-dollar drug racket, we shoiJd
at least be able to explain to our constituents why we do so.
Introduction
Public Enemies in High Places
T he phrase “billion-dollar racket” is familiar; but there is
probably only one enterprise that fully justifies the name.
That is the Illicit Drug Traffic, or “dope” racket. This ap-
parently does have a direct turnover of upward of a billion
dollars a year; with indirect toll — equally significant from the
standpoint of the taxpayer — of from two to five billions.
The word “billion” is as easy to pronounce as “million.”
Neither word has very definite connotations in the minds of
most of us. The words must be split into smaller factors to be-
come really intelligible. For present application, this analysis
may help:
The billion-dollar turnover of the “dope” industry is esti-
mated on the assumption of half a million addicts, using six
grains of narcotics (mostly morphine or heroin) daily, at one
dollar a grain (totalling $1,090,000,000 for the year).
The daily turnover is 500,000 (number of customers) times
$6, or $3,000,000. That means $600,000 an hour for five hours
of every day in the year; or $10,000 per minute.
At last we get down to figures that begin to have a meaning.
Ten thousand dollars is a very tidy sum. It is, for example, the
annual salary of a United States Senator or Representative.
And this is the sum that the “dope” peddler exacts every ^
minute of every five-hour day from the drug addicts who have
no other way to secure the drug that their infirmity makes
absolutely essential to their comfort, well-being, or even lives.
The most eager army of customers that ever merchant was
xxin
XXIV
Public Enemies
blessed with — customers that come grovelling, begging to be
allowed to purchase two cents’ worth of goods for a dollar.
Customers that the Federal Government has provided him, and
assures him, by forbidding them to buy in any other market.
Was there ever before in all the world — even in this racket-
ridden land — so sweet a Racket ?
Such is the Law-engendered and Government-protected
Racket that I purpose to describe in this book. In so doing, I
enter a virgin field. But I have explored it sedulously for many
years, and I offer a fully-documented record. The story con-
cerns, not merely loss of money, as might mistakenly be sup-
posed from the illustration just given, but far more importandy,
the persecution of many hundreds of thousands of sick people,
under aegis of Government authority, not merely in contraven-
tion of sympathy or pity or compassion, but in defiance of Law
— ^in contempt of the Supreme Court, and of the Constitution
of the United States.
The full exposition of the shameful and humiliating record
is the purpose of this book. The active coadjutors of the dope
ring, as we shall see, include authorities of the Bureau of Nar-
cotics (upheld by the Secretary of the Treasury) ; U, S. District
Attorneys (upheld by the Attorney-General of the U, S.) ; and
Federal District Judges (upheld by Circuit Judges). I do not
believe that one man in ten, of these coadjutors (but for whose
cooperation the illicit drug industry would disappear as rapidly
as it was developed) receives a dollar directly from the “dope”
smuggler and peddler. I befieve that at least nine out of ten of
the coadjutors of the racketeers are unwitting coadjutors. Or at
any rate four out of five.
Details, however, are not material. The essential thing is that
the billion-dollar racket, in all its ramifications, is the direct
outgrowth of illegal activities of Government oflEcials whose
supposed function is to sustain "the Law, The entire illicit drug
Public Enemies
XXV
situation — involving grave medico-legal, social, economic, and
humanitarian maladjustments — is not merely an illustration,
but the supreme and incomparable example, of government by
unconstitutional bureaucratic Code in defiance of Federal Law.
The proponents of this illegal Code — Government officials
though they were and are — must be ranked as public enemies
compared with whom the loudly-berated dope smuggler and
peddler are minor offenders. The very existence of the illicit
drug traffic is conditioned solely on the illegal activities of the
official public enemies in question. To speak of a puny Capone
or a futile Dillinger as “Public Enemy No. 1” while these big
boys are at the helm, is like suggesting that gnats are more
venomous than ratdesnakes.
Does this seem a strangely paradoxical statement } You will
not challenge its validity, I think, after you review the evidence
presented in the ensuing pages. You will presently understand
why I am accustomed to speak of the period (1915-1938) of the
American Inquisition — the era of persecution of sick people in
the United States by Government Edict or Code — as a strange
chapter of Medieval history.
My reason for dubbing this unconstitutional Edict the “Black-
mail Code” will be increasingly evident as we proceed.
BOOK I
Qrucl, ^ut ISiot U nusual
Chapter I
The ^American Inquisition
T here are only two countries in the world where the use
of narcotic drugs is regarded as a social and economic
problem of particular significance. These countries are China
and the United States of America. These are also the countries
where the mbst strenuous efforts have been made to suppress
the illicit traffic in narcotics by law. In China, at various times,
the use of opium has been a capital offense. In America we
have not openly reached quite that stage, but we do make un-
authorized possession of drugs a felony, punishable with five
years’ imprisonment.
And, in a curiously Pharisaical way, we exact the death
penalty far more often than it has ever been exacted in China.
On the economic side, the net result of the prohibition of
opium in China is that the production of opium there is now
estimated at upward of 15,000 tons a year — fifty times the total
world-need, as calculated by the International Conference at
Geneva.
The net monetary result of narcotics prohibition in America
is that the illicit drug traffic costs the country upward of a
billion dollars a year. We are known as furnishing the chief
market for smuggled narcotics, of which the supply in the
western world is estimated at five times the amount used medic-
inally. Our courts are jammed with narcotics cases. Nar-
cotics prisoners are packed like sardines in our jails and prisons.
“Dope” smugglers and peddlers have a direct annual turnover
of the order of three million dollars a day, or $1,090,000,000
3
4
Drug Addicts Are Human Beings
annually. By conscn'ativc estimate, there arc 500,000 narcotics
addias — popularly known as “dope fiends” — who depend ex-
clusively on the peddler for the drug that they cannot do with-
out.
No other country o£ the western world can make any thin g
like a comparable showing.
Why this unwelcome supremacy? The answer is not hard
to find. It is WTit large in official records. The illicit drug
traffic, with all its ancillary evils, was developed in this country
by Federal Law, as interpreted by Federal authorities of what
is facetiously termed narcotics “control.” The genesis may be
traced unequivocally in a few sentences:
The basic law is commonly known as the Harrison Narcotics
Law. It was passed by the Congress on December 17, 1914.
By title and on its face, it was a “pure revenue measure,” and
the Supreme Court affirmed, by decision in the Linder case,
1925 (cited also in the famous AAA decision of January
6, 1936), and sundry others that such is its status, and its only
status under the Constitution. But the Commissioner of In-
ternal Revenue held that the law has a hidden purpose. He
held that the law^ was designed to control drug addiction
(though the law itself makes no reference to addiction), and
his rulings made it encumbent on revenue officers to check
narcotics prescriptions with reference to the quantities of nar-
cotic drugs received by individual consumers.
This idea w'as followed up by the revenue officer directly in
control of enforcement, the Deputy Commissioner at the head
of the Narcotics Division of the Prohibition Unit of the Treas-
ury Department (subsequently known as the Deputy Commis-
sioner of the Prohibition Bureau, a position abolished when
that Bureau was superseded by the Bureau of Narcotics, in
1930). These titles arc of interest, as showing the complexion
of the narcotics-enforcemcnt personnel. The point of present
5
The American Inquisition
significance is that from this source, in 1921, came the little
“advisory” leaflet which was in effect a Code, allegedly based
on the Harrison Law, but in reality far transcending the power
of that statute, which was destined to transform the narcotics
situation in America.
^ This little leaflet was to create the illicit drug traffic; to raise
up an army of dope smugglers and peddlers; to increase the
company of drug addicts; to change thousands of self-support-
ing, law-abiding citizens into outcast derelicts and petty crim-
inals; to crowd court calendars and jam the corridors of
prisons; to inaugurate an era of persecution of sick people; and
to impose on the country a tax-burden of at least a billion dol-
lars a year.
Quite an imposing array of effects, to result from the is-
suance of a four-page leaflet by a minor revenue officer and
prohibition agent. But is it not traditional that great oaks from
little acorns grow.?
Let us not speak in parables, however. Let us ask just how
the little leaflet did its miracles. You would never guess the
secret from reading the text of the missive itself. This merely
states that the revenue officer does not approve of the medical
treatment with narcotics of patients who are addicted to the
habitual use of these drugs, unless these patients are forcibly
confined in institutions — hospitals, sanitariums, or jails. He
does not believe that the treatment of ambulatory patients is
likely to result in their permanent cure. So he frowns on such
treatment.
That was about all. It does not seem much. But the sequel
was to show that it was a-plenty. A century — or ten centuries
— ^from now, that little Code will be among the wonder-docu-
ments of history.
But when it was issued, no one — including the prohibition
agent himself — had more than the vaguest inkling of its sig-
6
Drug Addicts Are Human Beings
nificance. The agent was not a physician, of course. He per-
sonally cannot have supposed himself an authority on drug
addiction. But he had the advice of the President of the Ameri-
can Medical Association, and was backed by a resolution of that
Association, which expressed doubts as to feasibility of curing
addiction while the patients are not under restraint. Over-
looking the fact that the average physician knows practically
nothing about drug addiction or its treatment, the opinion was
valid enough. At all events, we need not challenge it at the
moment.
The thing to be noted does not involve argument as to the-
ories of drug addiction or cure. It involves a simple matter of
fact — ^which unfortunately the revenue agent and the physi-
cians who counseled him left quite out of account.
This is the fact that no institutions were available in which
the great army of narcotics addicts could be received for treat-
ment. General hospitals will not take them; sanitariums that
will take them are few, far between, and expensive; and jails,
even if they were considered good places for treatment of sick
people, were already overcrowded.
The enthusiasts further ignored the circumstance — known to
the few experts who knew anything at all about the subject —
that permanent cure of any case of addiction calls for many
months of careful control, followed by years of supervision.
And they seemed to pass lightly over the practical circumstance
that a major part of all narcotics addicts were engaged in gain-
ful industry, and could not very well afford to lie by for a term
of months, even if sanitariums or jails had been available to
house them.
If we recall that the only official figures available at the time
when the merry little Code was put forth appraised the number
of addicts in the country as “in excess of a million,” the real
flavor of the jest will begin to be apparent. (This appraisal was
k
1
I
^yr\0^t>o.
;£QWA(ID .
KUNTtNQtott
WiltiAmtiMD-
e
rtE cheated me!
HE CUT MY PRor/TSI
HE R0B6ED ME 1
8- Drug Addicts Are Human Beings
made by a special Committee, appointed by the Secretary of the
Treasury. It recorded the million addicts as being in all walks
of life, and three-fourths of them as gainfully employed. A
large number were housewives.)
Under ordinary circumstances, the slight inconsistencies in-
volved in the Prohibition Agent’s Code might have served to
add a little of the spice of life to a post-war generation that
needed to learn to laugh again. The word might have been
passed about that Colonel Nutt (that was the agent’s symbolic
name) would have his little joke, and things might have gone
on as before — ^which would have been well enough, there being
then no narcotics problem of significance in this country, any
more than in other countries of the Occident.
But in reality Colonel Nutt was not the joker that his little
leaflet seemed to reveal. He was in dead earnest — or should we
say deadpan earnest? I frankly disbelieve in reincarnation; so
I shall not suggest that the spirit of Torquemada or of Cotton
Mather bloomed again in the guise of Colonel Nutt. Yet the
sequel to the simple edict of the revenue agent was of such
character as to make good old Torquemada turn in his grave
with envy (if such feats are possible), and to show up the
Reverend Cotton Mather as a sideshow piker.
For the Edict of Nutt had to do, as we have just seen, with a
million victims; whereas Torquemada dealt only with thou-
sands; and with only eighteen or twenty thousand casualties;
and piker Mather s hanged witches were scarcely more than a
negligible baker’s dozen.
How the Edict of Nutt over-shadows these petty records, we
shall learn presently. First, however, let us follow up the se-
quence of events chronologically; noting what happened, and
why.
The salient condition that confronts us is the existence of a
vast company (never mind the exact number for the moment)
9
The American Inquisition
of persons who are addicted to the daily use of drugs that they
cannot abandon without being subjected to physical and mental
torture. A considerable percentage of these, if forcibly de-
prived of the drug, will die. Many more will come deadly close
to the danger line. All will suffer intensely. Deprivation of
the drug will no more cure them permanently of the craving for
it, than shutting a duck away from water will cure the duck
of the swimming habit, or urge to swim.
But now suddenly comes a “suggestion” that these people
shall be deprived of all narcotic drugs. And very soon the
suggestion is given the character of a mandate. The Edict of
Nutt “advised.” But very soon it was known that any physi-
cian or druggist who failed to heed the “advice” was likely
to be arrested, and vigorously prosecuted in a Federal Court.
And presently it was known that there were some Federal
judges who would interpret the Prohibition agent’s Edict, or
Code, as Federal Law.
-‘More than 110,000 arrests for alleged violation of the Har-
rison Narcotics Law were made in the years 1921-1923; and a
very large proportion of these were cases, not of violation of the
Law, but of infringement, real or alleged, of the Code. So
many convictions were secured that very soon the medical pro-
fession came to believe that the Federal Law did, indeed, pro-
hibit them from treating all cases of drug addiction disease.
Every wise physician heeded the warning, hardened his heart.
— "TVhat then ? Why, simply the happening of the inevitable.
Here were tens of thousands of people, in every walk of life,
frantically craving drugs that they could in no legal way se-
cure. They craved the drugs, as a man dying of thirst craves
water. They must have the drugs at any hazard, at any cost.
Can you imagine that situation, and suppose that the drugs
would not be supplied.'^ It would be childish, nay imbecile,
to answer that question in the afl&rmative.
10
Drug Addicts Are Human Beings
The Prohibition agent and his colleagues who were respon-
sible for the Edict were not children; nor, presumably, were
they imbeciles. It follows that they must have known that
their Edict, if enforced, was the clear equivalent of an order
to create an illicit drug industry.
They must have known that they were in effect ordering a
company of drug smugglers and peddlers into existence.
Few laws have ever been enacted that produced any effect
as surely as the Edict of Nutt produced an army of men to
smuggle narcotics into the United States and sell them sur-
reptitiously to the sufferers from drug addiction. For con-
venience, we shall speak of this Edict as the Narcotics (or
Blackmail) Code.
There must have been an intermediate period, before the
machinery of smuggling could be got into full operation, when
a vast number of the addicts suffered excruciatingly, because
their needs could not be met. A way could not instantly be
found to import two tons a month of morphine, through a
barricade of Inspectors not yet subsidized. Probably ten per
cent of the addicts died of deprivation. Experience shows that
something like that proportion, cannot survive the strain of
deprivation, unsupported by medical attention.
That would mean the death of upward of a hundred thou-
sand sufferers, if the official estimate of a million addicts be
accepted. At the lowest estimate that anyone has ever made,
it would mean ten thousand deaths. (Recall meantime that the
victims of the guillotine during the Reign of Terror in Paris
numbered less than two thousand.) Here, then, was a Reign
of Terror and an Inquisition combined. And it was to last,
not for a term of months, but for at least seventeen years.
There is nothing else quite like it in history.
Even after the army of smugglers and peddlers was fully
established, to meet the need created by the Edict, or Code, the
II
The American Inquisition
time of suffering for the victims was by no means over. In the
first place, it would have been difficult to insure a steady and
invariable supply of drugs, to meet so vast a demand, even if
there had been no monetary drawback. But, in addition to this
uncertainty, there was the fear ever-present in the minds of
ninety-nine addicts in a hundred, that he or she would not be
able to get the money to meet the peddler’s exactions of the
morrow.
Needless to say, the peddler did a cash business only. Need-
less to say, also, that his prices were extortionate. The value
of morphine, at a drug store, might be two or three cents a
grain. The peddlers soon standardized the product at one
dollar a grain. And at that the drug might be diluted or of
poor quality — or it might even be substituted wholly with some
utterly valueless product like sugar of milk.
The average need of an addict of full development is of the
order of ten grains a day, even under favorable conditions.
Under conditions of stress and uncertainty, with attendant
worriment, the need is greater. Many addicts require fifteen,
twenty, even thirty or forty grains a day— in some exceptional
cases, two or three times even these excessive quantities.
But how was the average addict — revealed by the official
census as an average person — to secure ten or fifteen dollars
a day, to pay for the drug he imperatively needed ? Not for a
single day, mind you, but each and every day, month after
month and year after year. With no possible days of inter-
mission;— for the drug addict is not like the dipsomaniac, able
to abstain for considerable periods. He must have a portion of
the drug every jew hours; several times a day.
How was he to get ten or fifteen dollars, over and above the
cost of food, shelter, clothing for himself and family, each and
every day — say $3,650 to $4,000 a year.?
Can you guess the answer .? The average addict could not get
12
Drug Addicts Are Human Beings
such a sum by any ordinary means. He could not get it by any
honest means. Then he must get it by dubious means — he
must beg, borrow, forge, steal. No choice remained. Being
an average citizen, he was not a criminal, not an anti-social
being at heart. And he had double incentive to avoid conflict
with the law, because incarceration would mean deprivation
of the drug on which his health and sanity depended.
But the frenzied craving gave him no choice. Already he
was a felon in the eye of the law, because he bought the drug
of a peddler who had no license to sell drugs and could obtain
none. It would be only another step, when money utterly
failed, to resort to peculation.
So the army of harassed addicts became an army of law-
breakers perforce, even if abundantly supplied with money.
Lacking abundant means, they became actual breakers of the
Common law.
Seldom in history of any people has a single Edict produced
such an army of law-breakers as the Edict of the Prohibition
agent evoked. The United States Government, as represented
by its Revenue officers, became the greatest and most potent
maker of criminals in any recent century.
The American Inquisition thus inaugurated will stand out
for all time among the great epochs of persecution. Speaking
as an historian, I venture to predict that, even within the pres-
ent century, it will be regarded as an event of far greater sig-
nificance for America, and entitled to a larger place in historical
annals, than the event that we now speak of as the World War.
The direct loss of life within a year was probably double the
total loss of life in the American army in that War. And the
soldier’s death was of the two less hideous, because the ambu-
lance corps was usually at hand to give the heroic combatant
nepenthe with the self-same drug — morphine — for lack of
which the despised addict perished in agony.
The American Inquisition 13
In attic or gutter these victims of fanaticism died unpitied.
And the Torquemadas who wrought the havoc, plumed them-
selves on their victory as censors of public morals, and were
acclaimed as champions in the great battle against the fear-
some ogre which they named with bated breath the “Dope
Fiend.”
Yet in truth this Narcotics Addiction Ogre, as revealed in
the public press and combated by the fanatics, had the same
Dr. Hawkins was sentenced to prison for giving this tubercular patient mor-
phine. Then the patient died of haemorrhage for want of morphine. The
Appellate Court said, in effect, that the joke was on the Doctor — and sustained
the sentence. (Fifth Circuit, 1937.)
Drug Addicts Are Human Beings
degree of substantiality as the Demons of Torquemada and the
witches of Cotton Mather. As a public menace, the twentieth
century phantom rivals the windmills of Don Quixote.
In the heyday of the Spanish Inquisition, a physician stood
beside the victim in the torture chamber, to call a halt if the
“questioning” threatened the life of the heretic.
But the modern heretic — the narcotics addict — ^was denied
all medical aid. Not only in private life but in hospitals, with
physicians standing at the bedside, addicts were allowed to
die in agony — ^because no one dared to solace or rescue them
with a dose of the interdicted drug.
The records of this American Inquisition make a strange
chapter of medieval history — of the years 1914-1938. As I said
before, there is nothing quite like it — nothing quite so unbe-
lievably fatuous — in the entire range of antecedent history.
You do not believe this.? You cannot believe it.? I chal-
lenge you to read the ensuing pages and then to point out any
era of persecution, of any age or race, in which man’s inhu-
manity to man plumbed greater depths of sheer brutality than
were attained, and are still maintained, in the Dark Age of
twentieth century America.
It is a record of which every American may well be other-
wise than proud.
Chapter II
Ambulatory Addicts
W E HAVE learned that the famous Treasury Depart-
ment census of drug addicts, made in 1918, estimated
the number of habitual users of narcotic drugs in the United
States as “in excess of a million.” Upward of three-quarters of
these were found to be engaged in gainful industries of wide
range and variety.
In order of frequency, the addicts were listed as of the fol-
lowing occupations: l,_housewi-ves; 2, laborers; 3, physicians;
4, salesmen; 5, actors; 6, unemployed; 7, business men and
women; 8, nurses; 9, farmers; 10, ofl&ce workers; 11, profes-
sional men and women; 12, prostitutes; 13, pharmacists; 14,
dope peddlers; 15, mechanics; 16, merchants; 17, gamblers;
18, newspaper men and printers.
This list is highly important as showing that drug addicts, a
few years after the enactment of the Harrison Law, and before
the Code became operative, were scattered through all ranks
of society; were for the most part employed in tespectable call-
ings; and very emphatically did not include a large percentage
of the criminal classes. Only three minor groups — prostitutes,
dope peddlers, and gamblers — could be called criminal types.
The idea that the habitual use of opiates (the only signifi-
cant type of addiction, other than caffeine, nicotine, and alcohol
addictions) tends to degrade the mind and morals is an illusion
foisted on the public by the newspapers, with their “dope
fiend” drivel. The truth which every competent observer will
affirm is that opiate addiction tends to repress rather than
IS
i6 Drug Addicts Are Human Beings
accentuate criminal propensities. Opium is a soothing rather
than an excitant drug. Moreover, the fear of tlie pains of
withdrawal symptoms, which would ensue if the addict were
arrested, has a further restraining influence.
The addict becomes a criminal only when the drug is with-
held. The Narcotics Code, through making drugs inaccessible
at reasonable cost, was the direct and appalling cause of the
minor criminal activities of the thousands of addicts who in
the pre-Code days were respectable, law-abiding, self-support-
ing citizens.
Even under stress of privation, opium addicts almost never
become major criminals.
The vast preponderance of their delinquencies are at worst
of the order of petty thefts — to secure money with which to
buy from the peddler the drug that they imperatively need,
and which, in any sane view, they are as much entitled to re-
ceive as the nicotine addict is entitled to receive tobacco, the
caffeine addict coffee and tea, or the alcohol addict beer and
whiskey.
Waiving that point for the moment, however, the second
thing to be noted about the named employments of normal
addicts is that the million addicts listed were obviously for the
most part persons who went about their affairs just as other
people do. That is to say, using a term that came into vogue
presently, they were “ambulatory.”
That word came to have a very particular meaning, after the
Narcotics Code came into being. For the Code expressly
stated that ambulatory addicts were under no circumstances to
receive narcotics treatment, even in the attempt to cure their
addiction.
That “regulation” has been appraised as perhaps the strangest
ruling that ever issued even from a political bureau. Its con-
sequences could not be other than bizarre. Here were up-
Ambulatory Addicts 17
ward of a million people of normal activities and vocations,
whose normality — even sanity — depended upon the regular
use of small quantities of an inexpensive medicine, which, by
the worst appraisal, is no more harmful than tobacco, and by
any sane appraisal far less harmful than alcohol. The average
user required about ten cents’ worth of this medicine daily,
at the usual drug store rate of sale.
So long as this dime’s worth of medicine could be secured
daily, the three-quarters of a million users who were gain-
fully employed — in every manner of legitimate work, including
all the “learned” professions — could continue their vocational
activities precisely on a par with their fellows. Many of them
did not realize that they were opium addicts, any more than
the average tobacco smoker realizes that he is a nicotine addict.
A very large number of housewives and others got their
medicine from patent nostrums — soothing-syrups, pain-killers,
“female remedies,” and the like.
No one thought of the use of these medicines as having any
moral significance. (One fairly well known temperance lec-
turer was a morphine addict. Thousands of women were
addicts of opiates, with no thought of wrong-doing, who would
have gone on their knees to pray for a lost soul had they seen
cigarette stains on the fingers of a daughter.)
Now came the “regulation” that we have described as the
Blackmail Code, designed to prevent this scattered group of a
million average citizens from securing the medicine that they
imperatively needed. As I have said over and over, no stranger
manifesto ever issued from a political bureau. The fact that
it was not a law, yet was destined to have the force of law,
merely adds to the paradox; which is climaxed by the circum-
stance that the mandate would have been illegal — unconstitu-
tional— -even if it had been issued as a Congressional statute,
instead of a Revenue-bureau ruling.
i8 Drug Addicts Are Human Beings
I£ the “regulation” had been signed by the President of the
United States, the Secretaries of State and Treasury, and the
Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, it would have had pre-
cisely as much legal, or constitutional, authority as if it had
been signed by a bootblack— -or by the Revenue and Prohibi-
tion agents who actually did sign it.
Yet for fifteen years (at least) it was to have the full force of a
devastating law, as we have seen. Our concern of die moment
is with the effect of the Code in preventing physicians from
prescribing the needed medicine for any habitual user whom-
soever, except under peril of arrest and prosecution. The rule
which effected this interdiction was the clause forbidding the
treatment of ambulatory addicts.
An ambulatory addict, within the definition of the Code, is a
person who is not under forcible confinement — in jail, prison,
or under commitment in a sanitarium.
The actual meaning of ‘‘ ambulatory T as things worked out
in the sequel, is: “able to visit a dope peddler!’
The ultimate effect of the Code (whatever the original in-
tent of its promulgators) was to make sure that no addict who
could walk should receive the drug he needed except by buy-
ing it from a dope peddler.
Needless to say, there was no such statement as that made
openly in connection with the Code. On the contrary, the
Code made ostensible provision for the medical treatment of
even ambulatory patients who were either (a) so old and in-
firm that deprival of the drug would endanger their lives; or
(b) sufferers from some incurable pathology, other than addic-
tion, of the class of “cancer, late stage of tuberculosis, or other
maladies well recognized as falling in this class.”
Please note the word “ostensible.” It has plenty of meaning.
What it implies in practice will be told in detail in other con-
nections. What it did not imply is that any physician could
Ambulatory Addicts 19
give narcotic treatment to any addict whomsoever so long as
that addict was able to visit a dope peddler — unless the physi-
cian coveted arrest and prosecution for felony.
A brochure issued in 1925 by the Los Angeles County Medi-
cal Association (a body of upward of 2,500 members, affiliated
with the National Association), stated the matter concisely and
accurately in these words:
“It is here stated definitely, and after consideration, that any
physician who attempts to devote his time to the treatment of
narcotic addiction disease at the present time, no matter how
conservative he may he, or conscientious, or careful, or no mat-
ter how humanitarian his purpose, will invariably come into
conflict with the laws!*
The “laws” referred to, it was clearly stated, were not actual
laws, but the “regulations” or Code, about which we are speak-
ing. At about the same period, there were editorials in various
medical journals of similar tenor. At this time, too (1925),
came the Supreme Court decision in the Linder case, declaring
that The Harrison Law had no jurisdiction over medical prac-
tice, and was never designed to have (and would be uncon-
stitutional if it did make such an attempt).
But now the dope smuggler and peddler were in complete
control, supported by the illegal Code, and mere Federal Law
was at a total discount.
For ten full years thereafter it continued to be true that no
physician could treat an ambulatory addict without danger
of coming in contact with the “law” — ^with a statistical chance
of 95.6 per cent of being convicted of a felony for his humani-
tarian pains. Physicians who were soft-hearted enough to yield
to patients in distress were put through the Code mill at the
rate of more than a thousand annually (1,293 in 1934), and
either blackmailed into paying tribute or sentenced to prison.
A word to the wise does not always avail; but a five-year sen-
20 Drug Addicts Are Human Beings
tence (to prison) is likely to reach the understanding of even
the least intellectual.
The cream of the jest is that ninety-nine times in a hundred
the physician who was made to feel the power of the Code
(disguised in a sheep’s skin of “Law”) had believed himself to
be following the Code to the letter. Not one physician in a
thousand realized that the Code was illegal. It was universally
assumed that the “regulations” were actual Law of the land.
But thousands of unwary physicians, first and last, assumed also
that the regulations were put out in good faith (one naturally
thinks that about Federal rulings, until one learns better), and
that therefore it was permissible to treat narcotics addicts who
obviously suffered from some incurable and painful malady
other than addiction — as allowed, ostensibly, you recall, in the
famous “exception number 1” of Article 85 of the “Regula-
tions.”
No assumption could have been more mistaken — or more
dangerous. A patient might have both cancer and tubercu-
losis (the two “exempt” diseases named) and syphilis of the
nervous system thrown in for good measure; but if that patient
was still able to get about enough to visit the dope peddler
(and many victims of these maladies are ambulatory almost to
the end), any physician who treated him was virtually signing
a permit to introduce himself into the penitentiary when he
wrote his name on the prescription.
That doesn’t seem plausible, but the score counts. Upward
of twenty thousand physicians, if they cared to speak, could
tell you from personal experience how very fully the score
counts.
And a hundred thousand other physicians, having seen what
happened to their colleagues, will tell you very emphatically
that they would not treat a drug addict, under any conceivable
circumstances, to save his life — or yours.
i
Ambulatory Addicts 21
Can you blame them?
Yet there were thousands of these humane physicians who
could not stand by and see human beings suffer without seek-
ing some means to aid them. It occurred to many hundreds
of them, in the aggregate, in one part of the country or another,
that something might be done by cooperative action. The com-
mon impulse that actuated them was well expressed in a find-
ing of the Whitney Legislative Commission in New York,
which, after a lengthy investigation, in a report to the Gov-
ernor, stated:
“It has been established to our satisfaction that drug addic-
tion, however acquired, is not of itself a vice but is rather a dis-
ease and one which affects honest and intelligent people in all
walks of life . . . any member of the medical or pharma-
ceutical PROFESSIONS WHO REFUSES TO PRESCRIBE OR DISPENSE
NARCOTIC DRUGS TO ANY HONEST ADDICT TO ALLEVIATE THE SUF-
FERING AND PAIN OCCASIONED BY LACK OF NARCOTICS IS NOT LIV-
ING UP TO THE HIGH STANDARD OF HUMANITY AND INTELLIGENCE
ESTABLISHED BY THESE GREAT PROFESSIONS.”
The Narcotics Code, to be sure (which came three years
later), runs absolutely counter to such a pronouncement. The
Prohibition agent at the helm, and his dope-peddler coadjutors,
were not troubled by “standards of humanity and intelligence.”
They thought in terms of fanaticism, of bureaucratic pride, and
of dollars.
LAW VERSUS CODE
The Harrison Special tax law (often called the Narcotics Law) of
1914 was designed to make syrp that ..narcotic .drags were, distributed
solely by physicians. . . ^
The Narcotics Code (stemming from rulings of the Commissioner
of Internal Revenue), never a law, denied the viciim of narcotic addic-
tion disease the privilege of securing any narcodc. drug from the physi-
cian or druggist, forcing him to patroni.'^.e the newly-created dope
peddler.
22
Drug Addicts Are Human Beings
The Supreme Court (Linder decision, 1925) declared that the Federal
Government has (legitimately) no such power as that assumed in the
Code.
The successive Attorney Generals under Presidents Coolidge, Hoover,
and Roosevelt (1925-1934) ignored the decisions of the Supreme Court,
and, through their subordinate United States Attorneys, and with the
cooperation of District and Circuit Federal Judges, arraigned upward
of 20,000 physicians for alleged criminal violation of the Harrison Act.
Not one in a hundred of these physicians had violated any law, but
ninety-five per cent of those brought to trial were convicted.
In May, 1935, in the N. R. A. decision, the Supreme Court declared
Codes (of which the Narcotics Code is typical) unconstitutional. The
Executive Department (Attorney General, U. S. Attorneys, Federal
Judges) ignored the decision. More physicians were prosecuted in 1935
than in 1934.
In January, 1936, the Supreme Court, in the A. A. A. decision, reit-
erated its ruling that the Federal Government has no control over the
practice of a profession, citing the Linder decision of 1925 as basic.
In August, 1936, a Government official, on the witness stand in a nar-
cotics trial, stated: “We pay no attention to the Linder decision.” (In
that particular case, the physician on trial was found guilty and sen-
tenced to seven years in the penitentiary and a $10,000 fine, his crime
being that he treated two patients for three days with hypodermic injec-
tions in his office — as he had every legal, medical, and moral right to
do.) Federal Judges in general — with one notable exception — continued
to uphold the Code, In defiance of the Supreme Court.
It is now stated, and will be frequently repeated in these pages, that
all Narcotics Officers, United States Attorneys, and Federal Judges who
continue to defy the Supreme Court, and uphold the unconstitutional
Code (thus playing into the hands of the dope peddler) are ipso facto
members of the Dope Ring — whether or not they are conscious co-
adjutors. The results of their illegal activities are illustrated in the
successive chapters of this book.
Chapter III
Qode Versus Qlinic
O UT in California twenty years ago a distinguished at-
torney, Major Frank S. Hutton, was appointed special
counsel for the State Pharmacy Board, with headquarters at
Los Angeles. One of his functions was the prosecution of all
offenders charged with violation of the State Poison Act, most
of whom were narcotic addicts.
As Major Hutton himself tells the story, he soon came to
realize that the law was not accomplishing anything toward
the reformation of addicts. He found the same offenders
coming before him again and again. He began to realize that
this was a medical rather than a legal question. He consulted
physicians, and found that most of them were totally ignorant
of the character of addiction and the nature of the addict.
Most of those that had any ideas on the subject thought of the
cure of addiction as the purging of the system of a poison; and
had no conception that the time element should involve months
or years instead of days.
He found, however, a few psychiatrists who had clearer
notions, or better knowledge; and with their cooperation he
was able to start a movement for the medical supervision of
addicts, which culminated in the formation of a public Clinic
where addicts of all types could receive expert medical atten-
tion. This was in the years immediately following the War,
when a large number of veterans who had acquired the drug
habit while overseas were in urgent need of attention.
The Clinic was purely a humane enterprise, conducted by
23
24
Drug Addicts Are Human Beings
distinguished physicians, who received nothing whatever for
their services (as is usual with medical Clinics). The results
were highly gratifying. The work was conducted with the
cooperation of the State Board of Pharmacy. Different types
of cases were classified, and patients regarded as fit subjects for
such treatment were permitted to receive a ration of morphine
adequate to keep them in “balance.”
Major Hutton asserts that he himself kept track of many of
these patients while under care of the Clinic, and that “they
were able to earn their living, support their families, and main-
tain themselves with at least a semblance of decency, where be-
fore that time they were derelicts of the first order.”
That sounds like a good beginning. The humanitarians im-
agined that they were doing a good work. The State Board of
Pharmacy cooperated with enthusiasm.
Then the Clinic was closed by the Federal Government.
At about the same time a Narcotic Clinic of similar scope
was started at Shreveport, Louisiana. This also operated with
apparent success, and had the approval of local narcotics and
Other authorities. The physician who conducted it felt elated
at the results of his humane and unpaid endeavor.
Then the Clinic was closed by the Federal Government.
Shortly afterward, up in Portland, Oregon, we find another
Narcotics Clinic, under auspices of the Health Commissioner,
Dr. George Parrish. A free Clinic, of course, conducted by
philanthropic medical men, with approval and cooperation of
city officials and narcotics officials, local and State. All persons
concerned felt that good work was being done — sick people
humanely treated; opportunity for rehabilitation given many
a derelict. There seemed promise of great things. A fine
beginning toward the solution of the narcotic addiction prob-
lem.
So the Clinic was closed by the Federal Government.
Code Versus Clinic
25
A few years later, another Clinic was started at Los Angeles.
This Clinic was inaugurated by the Health Board, with co-
operation of the Commissioner of Charities, afterward Mayor.
Its chief proponents included the members of the Narcotics
Committee of the County Medical Association, and afl&liate of
the American Medical Association (the local Association hav-
ing about 2,500 members).
The Clinic was presently housed in the County General
Hospital, one of the largest and best equipped hospitals in the
world. Physicians who were members of the regular hospital
staff (psychiatric and endocrine departments) were directly
in charge of the Narcotics Clinic. The local and State Nar-
cotics ofiEcials were ardent supporters of the Clinic, and every
case under treatment was reported in detail to the State Board
of Narcotic Control.
No one connected with the Clinic received a cent of pay.
All prescriptions (sometimes to the number of seventy in a
single day) were written and signed by one or the other of the
two chief physicians, in accordance with a State regulation.
One physician, in the course of three years, wrote with his
own hand and signed upward of five thousand of these pre-
scriptions — absolutely without remuneration.
Several hundred hopeful cases were hospitalized and given
treatment to cure addiction, various methods being tested, and
a new form of supportive treatment developed. Incurables
having other painful pathologies were given weekly rations of
morphine, in the smallest adequate daily dosage, for self-ad-
ministration.
Seventy of these cases, over a period of three years, were so
far rehabilitated that they became law-abiding, self-supporting,
relatively healthy individuals, mingling unnoticed with their
fellows. Not one of these came in contact with the law during
this period, though many of them had earlier “criminal” reo
26
Drug Addicts Are Human Beings
ords; — ^that is to say, had been repeatedly afoul the law during
the time when it was impossible for them to secure by legiti-
mate means the drug they required.
Recall, please, that the average price charged by the peddler
for morphine is from fifty cents to one dollar a grain, and that
the average dose required to keep a confirmed addict in balance
is ten grains a day. This means that every patient had to pay
from five to ten dollars a day to the peddler. Few addicts
could secure such a sum, in addition to living expenses. How
many ordinary workers can afford two or three thousand
dollars a year for medicine?
But the same amount of drug could be secured at a pharmacy,
under prescription of a Clinic physician, for forty cents a day,
or $146 a year. Even that seems a good deal. But most of
the patients could and did manage it. Many of them were
persons of much more tlian average intelligence and voca-
tional ability. For the few exceptions, the drug was supplied
without charge by the authorities.
The work accomplished by the Clinic was so beneficent that
word began to go abroad that California had solved the nar-
cotics problem, at least as to one type of addiction — patients
having severe types of pathology other than addiction disease.
It was felt that if the State law could be modified, to permit
the treatment of ambulatory cases of pure addiction disease as
well (these being the cases with far better chance of cure),
California would indeed set a model for the entire country to
follow.
All medical specialists who had personal knowledge of the
work of the Clinic, and all local and State Narcotics authorities
— to say nothing of Mayor Shaw and his associates, the officers
of the Public Health Service, and sundry other humanitarians
— ^were enthusiastic. From personal observation they knew
what was being done, not merely for physical rehabilitation of
Code Versus Clinic 27
the sufferers, but for the economic interests and the forces of
law and order.
A great humane reclamation project was in being. The
White Cross Anti-Narcotics Societies applauded the good
work, and gave it publicity.
Meantime the narcotics officers and the police reported a
marked falling off in the number of “dope” peddlers — as
might be expected, considering that so many customers had
been taken away from them.
Therefore the Clinic was closed by the Federal Govern-
ment.
Does that seem a non-sequitur ? No, it is a quite logical se-
quence — a valid collocation of cause and effect: The Clinic
rescued sick people from the clutches of the dope peddler, and
therefore the Clinic was closed.
“And that,” you say, “is a logical sequence T'
Precisely so. That was just what 1 meant to say. The Clinic
enabled seventy people at one time, for a period of three years,
to keep clear of the clutches of the dope peddler.
That meant that upward of |700 a day, or $255,500 a year,
or more than three-quarters of a million in three years had
been taken out of the pockets of local peddlers.
Could you expect the peddlers and the smugglers that supply
them to sit back quietly and see their business cut to ribbons?
Hardly. And so, as I said once or twice before, the CUnic
was closed. Seventy patients leading normal lives were sud-
denly told that they could no longer receive the medicine on
which their integrity of body and mind depended, except from
the peddler — at ten dollars a day, in place of the forty cents
they had been paying at the pharmacy.
And this happened in the time of well-known depression,
early in the year 1934. How could the average citizen, addict
or not, secure an extra $3,650 dollars to pay the new medicine
28 Drug Addicts Are Human Beings
bill? Not by following his legitimate vocation, you may be
sure.
I shall not now dwell on the sequel, beyond saying that at
least six of the unfortunates thus thrown back to the dope
peddler died of privation within the half-year. Others endured
suffering rather worse than death. Practically all were forced
to abandon their normal manner of life, and become dependents
or vagrants or petty criminals. Those that did not actually die
must sooner or later find means to satisfy the exactions of the
peddler, who welcomed them back with greedy enthusiasm,
and profited as of yore by their helpless distress.
One patient, the wife of an invalid veteran, turned stool
pigeon, in her distress, under aegis of the Federal Narcotics
oflBcials, and was murdered by some Negro addicts for her
pains. Others sought piteously to be sent to the State Narcotics
Hospital, but could not be admitted, because they were incur-
able. Some pleaded even to be sent to jail — and were denied
that doubtful boon. One housewife, afflicted with an excruciat-
ingly painful tumor, writhed in agony at home, while her
pastor wrote and telegraphed to Washington, vainly seeking
permission for her to receive medical solace.
Others applied piteously to the chief Federal Narcotics agent,
who referred them to the President of the County Medical As-
sociation, who declined to take any action. When he saw the
Chairman of the Narcotics Committee of the Association under
arrest for having treated the narcotics cases at the Clinic, what
dare he do? He or any other physician? Obviously nothing.
Do you get the picture ? It is not easy to envisage. Here in
the fifth largest city in America, with upward of four thousand
registered physicians, several score sick people — all having pain-
ful maladies that have been diagnosed officially in one of the
largest and finest hospitals in the world — are in dire want of
medical treatment, and cannot receive it.
Code Versus Clinic
29
They suffer agony, and no physician dares to solace them.
They cannot be really ill, you say? Well, within seven
months nine of them will be dead, for want of medicine. (I
will give you their names, with brief details of their maladies
presently.) After all, that seems rather conclusive, does it not ?
People may fake symptoms. They may pretend to suffer, when
they really do not suffer. But when they seem to suffer —
features haggard, sweat pouring from their writhing bodies,
pupils dilated, blood pressure at low ebb; moaning piteously,
vomiting, purging — and presently collapse and are dead —
well, it takes a mighty skeptic to continue to argue that nothing
really ailed the impostor.
And when you have seen that sort of thing happen a few
times, you begin to wonder whether it might not be permis-
sible to give treatment to another person who seems to show
the same symptoms of distress, but is not yet dead.
The Narcotics Code gives the answer in the negative.
FEDERAL CONTROL
A typical illustration of the attitude of the Federal Narcotics Bureau
was given when a representative of that Bureau came to Seattle, to op-
pose a bill that had been prepared by the White Cross Society for presen-
tation before the 1937 legislature.
This bill, which had the support of the Governor, provided merely
that the State Medical Association should be empowered to treat nar-
cotic addicts humanely — supplying them with necessary medication, and
thus freeing them from the dope peddler. But this, of course, is the
one thing that the Federal narcotics authorities cannot tolerate. And,
as usual, their opposition proved effective. The bill was shelved, and
for at least another year the State of Washington was safe for the Dope
appraising such typical illustrations of the attitude of the Federal
authorities, it must be kept in mind that the opium addict is not in-
herently a criminal — ^but, on the contrary, when he can secure the drug
his system needs, is less prone than the average normal citizen to com-
mit infractions of the law. It is only “in their frenzied desire for money
30
Drug Addicts Are Human Beings
to buy drugs” (in the words of the Federal bill that established the
Narcotic Farms for treatment of addicts) that they commit overt acts.
It follows that the Narcotics authorities, in making it impossible for
addicts to receive direct aid from the medical profession (as in the
Seattle instance just cited), are effective promoters of crime.
If the Harrison law were observed, permitting this medical question
to be dealt with by medical men, the dope peddler would disappear for
lack of customers; the Federal court calendars would clear (^calling for
reduction rather than increase of the roll of Federal judges)-, Federal
prisons would be vacated to the extent of about thirty per cent of present
population; at least a billion dollars a year would be saved to the tax
payer and — ^most important of all — half a million pitiable victims of
human superstition, stupidity, and cupidity would be rescued and eman-
cipated.
All this would happen automatically if the decisions of the Supreme
Court as to the meaning and force of the Harrison Special Tax Law
(commonly called the Narcotics Law) were heeded by Narcotics Bu-
reau, United States Attorneys, and Federal Judges — in a word, by the
effective executive authorities.
In the light of such a situation, it is amusing to hear the clamor for
more Supreme Court Judges. What difference can it make how many
members there are, so long as the Court has no authority to enforce its
decisions? Twelve years have passed since a unanimous decision of the
Supreme Court declared that the Federal Government has no power
to regulate the practice of the profession of medicine; and that Congress
never intended to assume such power. And there has been no single
day since then when the decision has not been openly derided. A laugh-
able situation, is it not?
Chapter IV
of Honor
A n official report records with obvious pride that
it was the Federal Government which everywhere
“stepped in” and closed Narcotics Clinics, designed to amelio-
rate the condition of the victims of addiction disease, and rescue
them from the dope peddler, “throughout the country.”
This statement is authoritative, since it occurs in a report of
the State Narcotic Committee of California, signed by Senator
Sanborn Young and Assemblyman Ernest C. Crowley, and
containing corroborative article by Harry D. Smith, Supervis-
ing Narcotic Agent, Pacific Division (Federal) and Harry J.
Anslinger, Commissioner of Narcotics (Federal). It is interest-
ing to have this historical point settled, since there has some-
times been a question as to the precise origin of the mandate
through which the Clinics in question have been closed. Local
authorities have never been responsible, of course, since they
were always enthusiastic in support of the humane enterprises
which the mandates from Washington terminated.
At Shreveport, Louisiana, for example, where the Clinic con-
ducted by Dr. Butler, local Health Commissioner, attained
most gratifying results, a committee of the local Medical
Society, protesting against interference with the Clinic by out-
side infl uences, stated, in the course of a report of endorse-
ment:
“It is significant that Dr. Butler’s judicious and tactful con-
duct of the, Clinic has secured for him the unqualified support
and cooperation of the Federal [,?}, State, Parish, and City
31
32
Drug Addicts Are Human Beings
authorities, and also of the State and City Boards of Health.
“In brief we wish to express our unqualified support and ap-
proval of the Shreveport Narcotic Clinic and its systematic and
effective administration by Dr. Butler.”
Similar commendation came from ofl&cial resolutions of the
staffs of the two local Sanitariums (signed by thirty-five
physicians). So there does not seem to be any one to object
But the “Federal” authorities referred to in the report must
have been minor oflScers; for presently word came from Wash-
ington that the Clinic must be closed. And it was closed.
Among the results noted were these:
“Individuals who during the life of the dispensary were
leading decent lives and supporting their families reached a
condition of wretched poverty. . . . Dr. Butler reports the
deaths of severed former patients, three of these in jails in other
cities, while a number of his patients have been sent to the
State penitentiary. ... Of the forty cases remaining in his
care (for a time) after the closing of the Clinic, four have died,
two or three found other physicians to care for them tempo-
rarily, a few moved away, and the others have been forced to
patronize peddlers.
“The organized charities, he states, recognize the evil effects
of the closing of the Clinic and the city police department and
the sheriff report that they are having endless trouble with
users and peddlers. Petty crimes are increasing and the ped-
dlers are creating new cases.”
Under these circumstances, it does not appear that the closing
of the Clinic was much to boast about (except by the dope
peddlers). But since the Federal authorities point with pride
to the achievement, we may credit them with their accomphsh-
ment, and pass to another example. The early Los Angeles
Clinic has been mentioned. The Medical Director of this
Clinic was Dr. W. H. Bucher.
33
Roll of Honor
“He states that in the case o£ tuberculosis, venereal and other
chronic diseases, patients were encouraged with the help o£
Clinic treatment and supervision to pursue their ordinary oc-
cupations but that only too o£ten drug cases were allowed to go
without assistance and thus made dependable or criminals.
He points out that with his drug the user can function, that
without it he is sick, unable to work, and has but one object in
life, namely, to secure the drug that will put him on his feet.”
But such rehabilitation is no part of the Washington program.
In this instance, it is recalled that Colonel Nutt, already known
to us as chief proponent of the Narcotics Code, came himself to
close the Clinic. Then we read of interesting results that at-
tended the triumph of Federal authority.
“From the many letters received at the time of the clinic’s
last days we glean one salient fact that with the clinic operating
these unfortunates were able to work, and have the ideal of
normal men to look up to. Some who came to the clinic ragged
and filthy, left it with decent clothes, a bank account, and a
sense of having been a part of the machinery of production.
Just what will become oi those who prospered with the clinic
is open to rather dismal conjecture.”
* * *
“Every day since the clinic was closed there have been
patients with their relatives and friends, come to tell us of the
tragedies that followed in the wakes of these addicts’ failure
to get their morphine. Families have been broken up, men and
women have lost their jobs, others have gone where the drug
is accessible — ^all of this cemented together with suffering that
takes courage to see.”
“Suffering that takes courage to see.” But the Prohibition
agent and his associates of the Revenue Bureau were not lack-
ing in such courage.
34
Drug Addicts Are Human Beings
The Clinic was closed in August, 1920. Half a year later
(April 18, 1921), Dr. L. M. Powers, Health Commissioner of
Los Angeles, was still wondering, ruefully, what the motiva-
tion could have been that led to the disaster:
“I have not been able to realize,” he writes, “the actual pur-
pose of the closing of our clinic for there has been some un-
seen motive prompting much opposition to clinics which I
have not been able to comprehend.”
“Some unseen motive.” Unseen, but not altogether un-
known. Witness the letter which Mr. John P. Carter, formerly
Collector of Customs of the Los Angeles District, wrote to Dr.
Powers, under date of March 31, 1921. Here was an honest
official who was so situated that he could catch glimpses be-
hind the veil. Incidentally, it chanced that Mr. Carter had in
his official employ a man whom he regarded as the most ef-
ficient and trustworthy assistant in his entire secretarial staff,
who had been for many years a morphine addict — taking his
regular dose of the drug every few hours, and quite incapable
of functioning without it. Because of this experience, Mr.
Carter was doubly sympathetic toward the work of the clinic;
and this is what he wrote:
“I never was connected with any work that appeared to me
to afford such a field for service as during my connection with
you. Dr. Barrows, and the other splendid physicians who gave
of their time and of their intelligence so liberally in an effort to
deal with the narcotic situation. I believe there is a place in
there for service to human kind that will be more richly re-
warded in the way of human salvage than in any other field
of endeavor. It is a crusade as admirable and as deserving of
success as any other crusade in the whole tide of time.”
Then these telling words of appraisal:
“I can’t understand the opposition to it from any other
premises than that we are so thoroughly commercialized that
Roll of Honor 35
great commercial interests are more powerful than human
sympathy.”
“Great commercial interests.” Stated less diplomatically, the
billion-dollar bankroll of the illicit drug trafl&ckers.
Mr. Carter adds a few words of elucidation as to details:
“Our clinic here was closed on order of the Prohibition Di-
rector of the State of California, at that time Mr. John L.
Consadine. He was supposedly acting under instructions from
his superior officer, the Commissioner of Prohibition in Wash-
ington, under whose direction the administration of the Har-
rison Narcotic Law falls. ... A Prohibition Inspector came
36 Drug Addicts Are Human Beings
. . . and it was at direct written order that the clinic was
closed.”
In the fine volume on The Opium Problem, by Drs. Charles
E. Terry and Mildred Pellens, from which we quote some de-
tails of the closing of the Shreveport and early Los Angeles
Clinics, mention is made of similar Clinics in about forty other
cities of many States, including Connecticut, Georgia, Ken-
tucky, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Rhode Island, Ten-
nessee, Texas, and West Virginia. And it is stated:
“These were operated for varying lengths of time, but all
eventually were closed by order of the Commissioner of In-
ternal Revenue.”
If the hint dropped by the Collector of Customs of the Los
Angeles District may be credited, these must have been golden
days for the active functionaries of the Revenue Bureau. Forty
vigorous threats against the integrity of the billion-dollar bank
roll to be officially thwarted and reduced to innocuous
desuetude — surely such sterfing championship called for no
picayune reward. And there is no record of complaint.
Rather a note of jubilation, as suggested by the report which
was cited at the beginning of this chapter.
And now we bring the record nearer home, in point of time.
The story of the Narcotics Clinic at Portland, Oregon, is recent
history. I have heard it from the lips of its chief sponsor, Dr.
George Parrish, former Health Commissioner of Portland, and
now occupying a similar position at Los Angeles. The story
presents no novel features as to the success of the Clinic while
it operated. But there are one or two picturesque details as to
its closing that deserve narration.
There is no question at all in Dr. Parrish’s mind as to either
the origin or the motivation of the opposition to the Clinic.
The individual who came in person to demand that it be closed
was an officer or agent of the Federal Narcotics service, named
37
Roll of Honor
Woods. Soon after the baleful order to cease interfering with
the dope-peddler industry went forth, Dr. Parrish was talking
with the Mayor of the city, when a Negro addict entered,
pleaded for morphine, and, being refused, hurled himself on
the concrete floor with such violence as to knock him out com-
pletely.
“My God, Doctor,” cried the Mayor, “must we stand here
and see such things as that? Can we do nothing for these poor
unfortunates ?”
Dr. Parrish passed the question on to the Federal agent.
And this was the answer:
“Yeh, sure; there’s plenty you can do. Run the whole bunch
of them down to the ocean, and kick ’em in. They’ll make
fair fish food. That’s all any of them are good for.”
There was a Federal agent with plenty of the kind of
“courage” which the soft-hearted Los Angeles physician above
quoted found so difficult to summon.
The Mayor and Dr. Parrish, however, did not think well of
the suggestion. Yet had they followed it, they would in reality
have done the unfortunate addicts a kindlier service than by
turning them back into the clutches of the dope peddler, as
they were forced — ^by Federal mandate, as Senator Young
proudly reminds us — to do.
And now for a few more words about the later Los Angeles
Narcotics Clinic. I have named the local and State authorities
that sponsored it.
The success of the Clinic was spectacular. The debacle of its
closing, by Federal authorities, was cataclysmic. You think that
too big a word to apply to the sacrifice of a few score sick
people?
So perhaps it would be were only these individuals in ques-
tion. But the real import of the Los Angeles Narcotics Clinic
was by no means restricted to the narrow local bounds. It was
38 Drug Addicts Are Human Beings
an institution of rapidly-growing fame. Already the results of
its treatment of several hundred drug addicts had been pub-
lished in Medical Journals. The work was known to the White
Cross Societies, and projects were pending to petition legis-
latures to sanction the similar treatment of ambulatory addicts
whose sole malady was drug addiction disease — ^which the State
laws of California did not permit the Clinic to do.
In a word, an object lesson was being given in the simple
and effective solution of the opium-addiction problem.
But by the same token, the object lesson just as clearly re-
vealed the simple method by which the illicit drug traffic — the
billion-dollar racket — could be scotched.
The publication in which Federal Agent Senator Young ap-
plauds the closing of Clinics contains the statement that the
daily turnover of the dope-peddler business in California is
over $20,000, aggregating more than seven million dollars a
year. That business would have been nullified, as the Federal
apologists well knew, if the object lesson presented by the Los
Angeles Clinic were allowed to be generally observed. So word
went forth that the Clinic must be abolished.
I have elsewhere told in detail the manner in which this
object was achieved by the Federal authorities — in opposition
to the wishes and urgent efforts of all local humanitarians, the
Mayor and his associates, the Health Board, the Medical As-
sociations, and the State and municipal narcotics authorities.
Senator Young might well plume himself and congratulate
his confreres of the “Government” on so notable a victory.
But why, you ask, did the Federal authorities thus “step in
and stop” the Clinics.?
Simply because the Blackmail Code was and is a Federal
affair — the alleged interpretation of a Federal Law.
The Clinic was conducted by physicians who necessarily held
State licenses to practice medicine, there being no other licenses.
Roll of Honor
39
There is no such thing as a Federal license to practice medicine.
The physicians therefore paid full heed to State laws. They
believed themselves also to be giving full heed to Federal laws
— including the “Regulations” issued by the Narcotics author-
ities (which we here term the Blackmail Code), the legality of
which few physicians have ever thought of challenging.
Why, then, did the Federal authorities object to the operation
of the Clinic under such conditions ? ' Why should anyone wish
to thrust rehabilitated patients, now respectable and law-
abiding, back into lives of misery, hardship, pain, and crimi-
nality ?
We shall raise that question again and again before we are
through. And we shall find always the same answer — tender
regard for the integrity of the billion-dollar bankroll.
There does not seem to be any other answer available.
THE CARE OF PATHOLOGICAL NARCOTIC ADDICTS
Statement by Mayor Frank L. Shaw of Los Angeles
After years of experience as Chairman of the Welfare Committee of
the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors which had charge of the
Los Angeles County Hospital, including the Psychopathic Unit, and
as a result of my connection with City and County Health Departments,
it is my opinion that the only way of caring for pathological addicts
without putting them in the position of becoming the prey of the dope
peddler, and penalized by the peddler interests, is to have Centers for
administering to these sick persons by recognized medical authorities.
The Los Angeles Narcotic Clinic, under the immediate direction of
the Los Angeles County Medical Association and held in the County
General Hospital, fulfilled these requirements and seemed to success-
fully solve the narcotic problem in this vicinity.
I believe similar Centers throughout the nation, administered by the
local Medical Associations under the supervision of the Federal Govern-
ment, would eventually eradicate the narcotic peddler and contribute a
real public service to the unfortunate pathological addicts.
Frank L. Shaw
July 5th, 1938
Chapter V
Hypocrisy of the Qode
A HALF-TRUTH is often more deadly than a direct
whole-cloth lie. Similarly, the deadliest feature of the
Narcotics Code is its seeming plausibility. In particular, the
“exceptions” which permit narcotic treatment of what is com-
monly spoken of as “other pathology.” The exempting clause
reads:
“Exceptions to this rule may be properly recognized (1)
in the treatment of incurable diseases, such as cancer, advanced
tuberculosis, and other diseases well recognized as coming
within this class . . . ; and (2) where the attending physician
prescribes for an aged and infirm addict whose collapse from
the withdrawal of the drug would result in death . - •”
Nothing wrong with that, apparently. But let the guileless
physician act on the permission thus seemingly granted, and
note what happens to him. He is lucky indeed if he does not
presently find himself under arrest, haled to jail, and placed
under indictment. And when the case comes up for trial (if
he declines to “compromise,” or pay blackmail), he will soon
have his eyes thoroughly opened. He will discover that there
are no diseases “well (or for that matter ill) recognized” as
coming within the exempt class. And as for the “aged and
infirm,” Methuselah himself would not be old enough to
bring him within exception (2).
I have sat in court and heard medical witnesses debate pro
and con for many days (and to the extent of words enough to
fill a very large book) on the question of the “incurable disease”
40
41
Hypocrisy of the Code
of a patient who himself freely admitted having received treat-
ment for syphilis of the central nervous system (conceded to be
an “exemption” malady) and whom the Government attorneys
supplied day by day with the same amount of morphine that
the “accused’* physician had supplied — the chief prosecutor ad-
mitting that the drug could not be withdrawn without “produc-
ing a maniac!*
Can you believe in the bona fides of a Government attorney
who will virulently press a suit under such circumstances; or of
the Federal Judge who will permit the suit to be pressed, with-
out ever letting the jury gain an inkling of the true conditions ?
Neither can I.
But what can the helpless physician do about it ?
Even where the diagnosis is cancer or tuberculosis (the
maladies named as establishing the exempt “class”), the diag-
nosis may be disputed — ^and almost certainly will be disputed,
if the patient is able to go about, and hence might come within
purview of the dope peddler.
And as to that “aged and infirm” addict, let the physician be-
ware of him, as he would bar a leper from his office. For if,
thanks to treatment, his collapse did not “result in death,” the
partly restored sufferer will probably be dragged to jail, and
given such medical attention as to resuscitate him, and tem-
porarily take him off the drug, while under confinement (as
could never have been done without restraint). He will then
be carefully nursed in jail, to be used as a witness against die
physician, when the time comes for the trial. Of course the
addict may die in jail, as often happens, and in that case, the
suit is dropped. But often he pulls through; and after the
physician is disposed of, he is turned out, to become again a
patron of the dope peddler. And when he again collapses, no
physician will rescue him. He will die unsolaced; being now
too weak to secure money to pay the peddler. And he probably
42
Drug Addicts Are Human Beings
will be denied even the privilege of going to jail — since there
is now no ojSicial motive for arresting him. Man’s inhumanity
to man I
It sounds fantastic, does it not ? I am outlining the true story
of thousands of addicts — a very large proportion of whom were
honest citizens, of excellent position in their varied walks of
life — actors, authors, professional men, business men, tradesmen
in every sphere — before they became dependent on the drug,
and would so remain had not the blackmail code made it im-
possible for them to receive at legitimate cost the medicine that
their bodies now imperatively demand.
Just by way of typical illustration, let me quote a paragraph
from a personal letter that chances to come to me on the day
when I am writing these pages. The writer is a special in-
vestigator of the American White Cross Association on Drug
Addictions, one of the few organizations whose members are
fully apprised of the true status of the drug-addiction problem
in America.
“I have a case before me now of a fine young fellow who
took the cure at our hospital, remained off the drug thirty days,
went back on again. Through W.P.A. work he is able to earn
$55 a month, which supports himself and his very beautiful
and courageous wife. This man is in fear of being arrested and
sent back to our farm for six months, losing his job, breaking
up his home, and maybe the loss of his wife, simply because no
doctor in his little town will give him five grains a day or sell
them to him for fear of arrest. His Doctor says, ‘I am not go-
ing to sacrifice my reputation and practice for any drug addict
or all of them.’ What a terrible situation.”
A terrible situation, certainly. Yet you can hardly blame the
doctor. After all, martyrdom is a ghastly business. Any doctor
who tries to rescue such a patient will land in prison; or at best
with a “suspended sentence.” And even organized medicine.
Hypocrisy of the Code 43
as we have seen, is helpless — or lacks courage to “buck the
tiger.”
So this young man, who in any other country but ours
would stand an excellent chance of living a normal span of
normal life, like average members of his class, will almost in-
evitably, in this land of liberty, be forced into technical crim-
inality, become an outcast, driven from pillar to post; always
in distress; presently diseased, prematurely old and infirm —
finding release ultimately only in death.
But what of all that? Just another notch on the bludgeon
of the Federal Narcotics authorities. Why waste words on an
episode that is duplicated scores of times every day of the year —
and has been for the past double-decade? The billion-dollar
bankroll must and shall be preserved.
THE BILLION-DOLLAR RACKET
The investigations of Mr. Everett G. Hoffman, of the American White
Cross Association on Drug Addictions, extending over a period of fifteen
years, lead him to believe that there are at least 500,000 narcotics addicts
in the United States today. The average quantity of morphine required
by a confirmed addict is commonly placed at not less than six grains
a day. The dope peddler is the addict’s only source of supply, and his
price averages at least a dollar a grain.
On that basis, the peddler receives from the addict upward of $3,000,-
000 a day, or more than a billion dollars a year — which establishes the
dope racket as the most lucrative system of graft in the country or for
that matter in the world.
The billion dollar estimate takes account only of direct payment to
the peddler. The economic loss involved includes many other factors
cost of maintenance of the tens of thousands of addicts who would
be self-supporting, law-abiding citizens were they not forced into crimi-
nal activities to meet the exactions of the peddler; cost of police, courts,
jails, prisons, etc.— aggregating, according to carefully compiled esti-
mates of the American White Cross Association on Drug Addictions,
something like $2,735,000,000 a year.
That means a tax-toll of not far from one hundred dollars on every
famil y in the land, each year; or a total tax of, say, $2,000 during
44 Drug Addicts Are Human Beings
the period since the illegal Code o£ the Prohibition agent (based on
rulings of the Tax-Collecting Bureau) made it impossible for
addicts to secure the medicine they need, and thereby brought the dope
peddler into being. • i. t. -ii 1
Might it not be good business policy to do away with the illegal
Code, restore the Law, and thereby abolish the illicit drug racket.?
Chapter VI
'' <J\dedical ^J\dartyr/*
W HEN Dr. Lester D. Volk made the two famous
speeches (January 13 and June 30, 1922) in which for
the first and last time the illegal Blackmail Code of the Prohi-
bition commissioner was presented in its true light before the
congress, he gave various telling illustrations of the effects of
operation of the extraordinary document. Among others he
cited a case which is presented in the Congressional Record un-
der caption of “The Persecution of Dr. J. M. Manning.”
“We can no longer afford,” said Congressman Volk, “to leave
the interpretation of the law to the opinions of warring fac-
tions or administrative appointees, who change in personnel or
may change their minds overnight. We can no longer afford
to continue in our national life and administrative oflBces such
situations as called forth the editorial in the Morning Star, of
Wilmington, N. C., February 14, 1922, and which are calling
forth magazine and newspaper comment with increasing fre-
quency and openness of declaration and condenmation.
“The editorial deals with the recent trial and acquittal of Dr.
J. M. Manning, one of the most eminent medical men and
citizens of his State, arrested for falsely alleged violation of the
Harrison Act. The editorial states that during the trial it was
brought out that subordinate officials were ‘going about the
State terrorizing doctors and druggists.’ It voices public ap-
preciation of the statements and attitude of Judge Conner,
who condemned the actions of the Government official, and
states in part as follows:
45
46 Drug Addicts Are Human Beings
“ ‘The law under which Dr. Manning was indicted is one of
the most wholesome and beneficial laws on the Federal statute
books. But, like most Federal statutes, it provides that some
department or officer may make regulations for carrying the
law into effect. This law has been surrounded with so many
abominable and useless regulations that it is almost impossible
for a druggist or physician to sell or administer opiates or
narcotics without violating some regulation.
“ ‘It should not be necessary for a judge to comment on these
“flimsy cases brought into court against our best citizens” en-
gineered by “peripatetic” subordinate officials or whoever may
influence or direct them.
“‘Government by inspectors and deputies during the War
may have been necessary, but now that the war is over the
citizen is going to demand that the Government to which he
pays such enormous taxes shall protect his rights and not treat
him as an alien enemy.’ ”
Comment: Wrong. The citizen will make no such demand,
and die Government would pay no heed to it if he did. Less
and less will be heard of protest from anybody ; while the work
of persecution will go on with enhanced virulence for many
years to come — until many thousands of physicians have shared
Dr. Manning’s predicament, of whom the major part will not
share his ultimate good fortune of vindication — ^because pres-
ently the so-called Department of Justice will have learned a
routine method of making the worse appear the better part for
edification of judges and juries. However, let Congressman
Dr. Volk continue;
“It was just such another flimsy case,” he says, “that was
brought by my old friend and co-worker in medical journalism,
Dr. Christian F. J. Laase, one of the most utterly honest men I
have ever known, and one of the most studious and devoted to
his profession, a man whom I personally know to have started
''Medical Martyrs’"
47
in his narcotic work and study at the request of the officials of
the Government in cooperation with whom he studied and
pursued his work.
“The mere shifting of the enforcement of the Harrison Law
to the Prohibition Bureau brought into the field new appointees
and subordinates who reversed the meaning of the law through
arbitrary interpretation and arrested him for doing what their
predecessors had advised him to do. He was tried and ac-
quitted, but died as a result of the persecution and harassment
he was subjected to in the attempt to ‘get him.’ Medical
journals printed eulogies and medical societies passed resolu-
tions commending his work and writings.
“He was killed by the action of an ignorant Government
subordinate official. Fittingly inscribed upon his headstone is
the epitaph, ‘A Medical Martyr.’ ”
Dr. Volk then goes on to tell of another case, that of Dr.
Ernest S. Bishop, who is described as “probably the foremost
scientific student and authority on the subject of narcotics and
addiction in this country, if not in the civilized world.” He
states that Dr. Bishop was indicted more than two years before
by the “same ignorant and arrogant ofi&cial subordinate, and
held under indictment ever since.”
“This is clearly being used to keep from dissemination the
information on this subject contained in a library said to be the
most comprehensive and complete in existence and to prevent
the application of the principles evolved by an experience and
work known to be the most extensive in his country ... In
spite of the unanimous protest in the medical and lay press
there appears to be some power able to prevent a fair inquiry
into his case and to keep him under indictment and his work
suppressed.”
This was said in 1922. Another year or two elapsed before
the case could be forced on the attention of higher authorities.
48 Drug Addicts Are Human Beings
Then, to the credit of the Department, it may be related that
Assistant Attorney General William Donovan dismissed the
case, and declared that “this is the worst case of persecution I
have ever encountered in my experience as a lawyer.”
But vindication came too late. The long strain had under-
mined Dr. Bishop’s health, and he, too, became a Medical
Martyr. And no one has appeared with courage to use the
material that he was estopped by the years of persecution from
making available for the profession, for the victim of drug ad-
diction disease (a term first used by Dr. Bishop himself), and
for humanity at large.
These are but sample cases. The persecution went on un-
abated. Nay, it gathered force with the years. At least twenty
thousand physicians were victims of the persecution during the
ensuing fifteen years; and in 1934 a physician who ranked only
second to Dr. Bishop in his knowledge and experience of drug
addiction, and whose early book had shared with the book of
Dr. Bishop the honor of introducing drug addiction to the
profession as a pathological malady, was finally arrested as the
other had been, and subjected to the same process of delay that
proved effective not alone with the pioneer worker but with
hundreds of others.
The physician in question, whom the Government authorities
had sworn to “get” long before, was the chief physician of the
Los Angeles Clinic. The story of his persecution will be told
in another connection. But there will be no story to tell of
martyrdom in this case; for before the books are closed, his
victory, unless I greatly mistake, will be coincident with the
dissolution of the Narcotics Bureau, the banishment of the
Blackmail Code, and — but I leave the ultimate sequel for the
future to reveal.
Meantime, let us inspect other evidences of the beneficent
“Government” activities in the enforcement of the Blackmail
“Medical Martyrs’* 49
Code and the support of the Big Business men of the illicit drug
trafl&c.
THE BILLION-DOLLAR BUREAU GETS RESULTS
When the Harrison Act became Federal law in December, 1914,
there was no narcotics drug problem of consequence in America, aside
from the inconsequential matter of the smoking of opium by a certain
number of Chinamen. There was no smuggling of medicinal opium or
its products, because these medicines could be legally imported at legiti-
mate cost.
There were no drug peddlers, because there was no market for contra-
band drugs.
There were no narcotics addicts (aside from a few opium smokers)
in jails or prisons, because the person who becomes a narcotics addict
is not temperamentally a criminal, and because opium, unlike alcohol,
does not stimulate libidinous or other anti-social impulses.
In a word, prior to 1915, the very word “narcotics” was scarcely
known to the general public; the term “drug-addict” had no popular
meaning; few physicians had ever come professionally in contact with
addiction-disease; and the “narcotics offender” as we now know him
was unknown to police officers, courts, jail-keepers, or prison-wardens.
Such was the situation in 1915.
Ten years later, thanks to the Harrison Narcotics Law, as interpreted,
the situation had been metamorphosed.
Now the smuggling of opium products had become a gigantic indus-
try. There were thousands of peddlers, selling tons of morphine and
heroin at a dollar a grain (the legitimate price having been one or two
cents a grain). Tens of thousands of addicts, hitherto peaceable, self-
supporting, law-abiding citizens, had been forced into peculation and
crime to meet the exactions of the peddler; and these unfortunates filled
the jails, crowded court calendars, and constituted (along with dope
peddlers) 35 per cent of the population of the Federal prisons.
In 1925, there were 2,569 narcotics convicts in the Federal prisons (in
a total population of 7,170); where ten years earlier there had been
none.
In that simple statement you have perhaps the finest illustration in
our history of the way in which a well-meant law, misinterpreted, can
produce effects precisely opposite to those intended by its sponsors. Or,
putting the same thing in different words, how our befuddled law-
makers can manufacture criminals on a colossal scale, while imagining
themselve^ to be enacting a beneficent statute.
50
Drug Addicts Are Human Beings
I have explained elsewhere that the fault did not lie preponderantly
with the legislators themselves; the havoc having been wrought by the
interpreters of the statute — the authorities of Internal Revenue, Pro-
hibition, and Narcotics Bureaus. These were the direct developers and
maintainers of the billion-dollar illicit drug racket; the effective sponsors
for dope smuggler and peddler. These were the men who transformed
a negligible company of sick people into a vast horde of derelicts and
outcasts — ^being responsible, also, for the pitiful death from deprivation
of tens of thousands of sufferers.
But the politicians who wrought this havoc would have been help-
less had they not had the Harrison Law to cite as pretended authority
for their depradations. So, in the last analysis, legislators must bear
their share of the contumely that will ultimately be visited, by the verdict
of history, on all who were instrumental in carrying on the wholesale
persecution which, viewed in retrospect, will justify the characterization
of the years 1915-1938 as the time of the American Inquisition.
Chapter VII
Just a Letter
I T WOULD be hard to conceive a more telling indictment
of the Blackmail Code than that furnished by letters writ-
ten soon after the Code went into effect by intelligent, re-
spectable addicts, who found themselves veritably on the brink
of the abyss. The Congressional Record that contains the
speech of the Hon. Lester D. Volk in the House of Representa-
tives, June 30, 1922, reproduces several such letters that had
been sent to Dr. Volk by addicts who had read his earlier plea
in behalf of victims of addiction disease. In introducting these
letters, Dr. Volk says:
“No more convincing evidence for the necessity of an immediate and
complete investigation of the narcotic drug problem could be presented
than the facts contained in the following letters which have come to me
unsolicited from various parts of the United States. , . . They represent
the upright, honest, respectable, and respected addict, comprising from
80 to 90 per cent of those addicted. This is the type of addict whose
care and treatment, yea, their very salvation, should command the inter-
est of this wise, considerate, and humane Government. Contrast these
with the so-called depraved, degenerate, criminal, underworld type of
addict, exploited and advertised by morbid publicity.
“As pointed out in my previous speech, there are between one and two
million addicts in the United States. Over one per cent of our popula-
tion-
“The cries of these sufferers demand that we hear them in the name
of humanity. Can we ignore that cry? Can we ignore their plea for
help and assistance?”
Comment: Unfortunately, doctor, your question must be an-
swered in the affirmative. We can and we will ignore the cry
SI
52
Drug Addicts Are Human Beings
and the plea. The Blackmail Code will not be even challenged
by your eloquence. The billion-dollar bank-roll will not lose a
single bill through your attack. The smugglers and peddlers
and their coadjutors of the Narcotics legion (to which you else-
where refer so pointedly) will continue to laugh in your face,
and extract tribute precisely as they have hitherto done. To
show what this means we have only to read one of the letters to
which you refer. I choose the following, not because it is the
most touching, but because it is rather shorter than others.
“Congressman Lester D. Volk.
“My Dear Sir: Recently I have had the pleasure of reading your ad-
mirable speech relating to drug addiction.
“Unfortunately, I am one of the addicts, not of the criminal class. I
am a trained nurse and hold a supervising position in a large hospital.
What I have suffered for the past few years since the new laws and
rulings came in I never can begin to tell you. I have never bought
drugs from the underworld peddlers but will be obliged to resort to
that means of obtaining it if something isn’t done to assist decent, re-
spectable persons, such as I claim to be. The price of the drug now is
exorbitant and the means of obtaining it is simple torture for ill per-
sons. I have had a dreadful time finding anyone who would help me,
as all physicians are afraid of the law.
“I am tied up here in the hot city all summer and dare not go away
for a vacation, which I need so badly, because I can only obtain three
days’ supply of the drug and must stay right here in New York to get
it. A short time ago I lost my only brother and I could not even go to
the funeral, out of town, because I could not go away from the doctor
who gives me my prescription and the druggist who supplies me. This
slavery is almost unbearable.
“Addicts in New York are treated with less consideration and more
cruelty than the law allows animals to be treated. All last winter I
tramped through the bitter cold weather after my day’s work was done
to obtain my medicine, and then the fright and terror we live under all
the time for fear of being deprived of it altogether and being obliged to
admit our addiction, or the fear of being cast into prison and being
treated with what is called the ‘cold-turkey treatment,’ which consists
of sudden and complete withdrawal of the drug from the patient and
being hourly washed down with a hose of cold water until cured. I
will never submit to treatment at the hands of those cruel captors in a
Just a Letter
53
/
public institution. I will commit suicide on the steps of the Board of
Health Building first and show the world how cruel these existing laws
are.
“I contracted this dreadful curse through an illness, and was surprised
to find myself addicted after a short time. Not one of my friends knows
of my addiction and I never wish them to; it would kill me and disgrace
my family, and no one would dare to give me a position of any kind,
much less such a fine one as I hold now.
“If these people who are torturing decent drug addicts are Christians,
I never wish to be one. In the name of God and humanity, try to help
us to go our lives as best we can, not force us to any more humiliation.
This thing of being registered publicly as an addict is an outrage. Physi-
cians, many of them, would like to help us but are frightened to touch
a case of addiction. Oh, for some humane law and treatment for de-
cent drug addicts. Thousands exist. What can the law do by inflicting
such awful penalties for sick and unhappy persons? Oh, for a relief
from the hell and torture of the last few years — 2 l tortured and fright-
ened woman.
99
Query: Just what are the feelings of the Prohibition Agent
when he reads such a letter as this ? Does he gloat over it with
sadistic joy, realizing that it is his work; or is there just a
momentary clutch at the heart as he reflects that there are tens
of thousands of his victims who might have written the letter,
and that no other one man of our generation can perhaps justly
claim to have been responsible for so colossal a toll of un-
solaceable suffering?
But, after all, there is, for compensation, that good old
Napoleonic maxim: Canst thou mal^e an omelette without
breaking eggs?
And if it be a billion-dollar-a-year omelette, of necessity the
broken eggs must be more than a handful. Hand us the next
letter.
The next letter, and the next and the next, as Dr. Volk pre-
sents them, are no less pitiful. The personal stories are of
course variant, but the substance is the same. They are human
54
Drug Addicts Are Human Beings
documents to wring the heart of every normal person, and
fairly to glut the lust of the most insatiate sadist. Buried in the
Congressional Record, they probably accomplished little in
cither capacity.
Chapter VIII
Qan You Relieve?
T he Harrison Act is intelligible only when considered in
relation to certain elements of common knowledge —
which find no direct expression in the law simply because they
are matters of common knowledge. Thus, every legislator
knew that:
(1) The narcotic drugs under consideration include some of
the most indispensable drugs or medicines known to medical
science;
(2) That these indispensable medicines may be harmful or
dangerous if not handled skilfully;
(3) That several tons of these medicines are annually re-
quired in this country to meet the needs of sick people or
people suffering from accidents or injuries of painful character;
it being well understood that there is no known substitute for
opiates in the alleviation of major pain, such as the agonies of
cancer, of kidney stone, gall stone, lacerated wounds, burns,
toothache, neuritis, late stage syphilis, tuberculosis, etc.;
(4) That the medicinal administration of these indispen-
sable remedies to the millions of sufferers whose ills they al-
leviate is in the hands of three groups of expert professionally
trained persons known as (a) physicians, (b) dentists, and (c)
veterinary surgeons, respectively; and that these individuals
alone can be assumed to be competent, through professional
training and experience, to understand the uses of the drugs,
the conditions that call for their administration, the choice be-
55
56 Drug Addicts Are Human Beings
tween different types of drugs, and the proper dosage and
manner of administration;
( 5 ) That no layman is supposed to know anything definite
about the precise action of narcotic drugs; the difference be-
tween one type of narcotic and another; the medicinal versus
the poisonous doses of particular drugs; or the proper manner
of administration to meet the needs of the sick or injured
persons or animals that need them.
A man stricken with kidney stone or other agonizing pain
does not ask for a narcotic: he calls for a doctor.
In any tragic emergency, from fire, flood, gunshot wound,
knife-stab, automobile crash, or what not, every layman stands
aside to make way for the first physician who can be sum-
moned. He, and he only, will be assumed to be competent to
administer the narcotic that alone can alleviate the agony of
the victims. Not even a narcotics officer will attempt to stay
his hand. No layman, including the narcotics officer, will offer
advice as to how much morphine shall be administered. Prob-
ably not one layman in a hundred in the audience of sym-
pathetic witnesses knows or cares whether the physician has
administered one-tenth of a grain or ten grains of the pain-
quelling, agony-dispelling, life-saving drug — or, for that matter,
questions even the name of the drug, or would know the dif-
ference between opium, morphine, codeine, heroin, and cocaine
or novocaine if told.
Such„then, is the background of common knowledge in the
minds of the legislators whose votes made the Harrison Act a
Federal law.
Can you believe that a single legislator or any other pro-
ponent of the law designed that the enactment should result in
keeping the benefactions of the drugs in question from a single
sufferer at any time or place.?
Can you believe that any legislator designed that a single
I
I
Can You Believe? 57
“BY A JURY OF HIS PEERS” r
THE COURT: “Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, you and you alone can (
decide whether this patient is sick or not sick; what the sickness is, if any; |
what treatment should be given; whether or not this Doctor gave the right (■
treatment, too much or too little; — ^in short, all questions in medicine, diag- }
osis, treatment; everything that concerns the Science of Medicine is left to i
you! The physician merely expresses an opinion; you decide the Fact Such, |
the Court is obliged to instruct you, is the law.” |
(It thus appears that any layman, by taking oath as a juror, becomes an
authority on every medical question. But what if a juror should be sud-
denly stricken with, say, a heart attack? Would he depend on his eleven |
fellow-experts; or would he perhaps like to have a mere M.D. summoned?) |
physician anywhere in America should ever be prevented by
any layman from administering these beneficent drugs to any
patient who appealed for his services of mercy ?
58
Drug Addicts Are Human Beings
Can you believe that any legislator designed that any lay-
man should ever stand at the elbo’w of a physician to dictate
what narcotic medicine should be selected for administration
to a sufferer, or in what dosage ?
Can you believe that any legislator designed that any phy-
sician should be thrust into jail because some layman thought
or professed to think, that the physician’s estimate of the needs
of a patient was wrong — though no claim was made that any
patient had been injured?
Can you believe that any legislator designed that any com-
pany of twelve laymen should ever be asked to sit in judgment
on a physician, to decide whether the physician had correctly
diagnosed the exact nature of painful maladies; whether the
physician had not perchance been mistaken when he thought
the Argyll-Robertson pupil or the Romberg sign diagnostic of
syphilis of the central nervous system, involving sclerosis of
certain nerve tracts of the posterior division of the spinal cord ?
Can you believe that any legislator ever designed that a group
of twelve laymen should be asked to decide whether a physician
had administered a correct dosage of morphine to a patient
admittedly in need of medical treatment? Whether the physi-
cian had considered with sufficient care the question of reducing
somewhat the dosage of the drug? Whether the precise man-
ner of handling of a patient whom the physician treated was in
accord with “fair medical usage”? With the proviso (I have
a particular case in mind) that if the laymen believed that the
physician’s management of the case did not accord with a
general plan suggested by one other physician (though ap-
proved and declared good medical practice by several other
witnesses of equal or higher standing) — ^the laymen were to
pronounce the physician who administered the treatment a
felon ?
Do these questions answer themselves ? Then you know why
Can You Believe?
59
the Harrison Act makes no reference to the treatment of dis-
ease; why it attempts no estimate of any kind as to the use of
narcotics; makes no mention of addiction or any other malady;
does not in the sHghtest degree seek to hamper the physician
in the exercise of his professional functions; contains not the
remotest suggestion of standard for diagnosis of disease, ex-
amination of patients, manner of treatment; selection or dosage
of any medicine — ^nor of any other matter of professional
judgment or conduct whatsoever.
What place would such matters have in a pure revenue
measure, designed to put a special tax on the manufacture, im-
portation, sale, and distribution of certain drugs; a matter of
taxation, not of medication?
The legislators did not for a moment presume that they
were giving physicians the right to administer narcotics.
The legislators knew that they had no power to give such a
“right” — ^nor power to withhold it.
The right to administer narcotics, or any other drugs, is
given the physician by State laws, under which he holds his
certificate as a practitioner.
The Federal legislators had no thought of interfering with
that recognized state of things. They knew that they had no
Constitutional power to interfere, even had they desired to do
so. There is no such thing as a Federal license to practice
medicine; there is only a Federal permit to buy and sell
narcotic drugs in a certain manner.
Application for and receipt of this Federal permit does not
change by one whit the professional status of the physician
imder the State law that permits him to write prescriptions.
The sole provision is that, since he has paid a general tax
(the nominal sum of three dollars a year, subsequently reduced
to one dollar), he is entitled to use his ordinary prescription
blanks (authorized by the State Board of Examiners) instead
6o
Drug Addicts Are Human Beings
of being put to the inconvenience of getting a special type of
order-form issued by the Commissioner of Internal Revenue.
In response to this courtesy, made for his convenience, he is
to keep a record of his prescriptions, for the convenience of the
Commissioner of Internal Revenue, in checking the distribu-
tion of narcotics against sales that have not been properly taxed.
The entire transaction has no relation to medical practice as
such; and no word of the Harrison Act suggests any such re-
lation.
No LAW ON THE FEDERAL STATUTE BooKS forbids a patient to
seek aid of a physician — ^regardless of the nature of his malady,
real or imagined.
No Law forbids a regularly qualified physician to seek to aid
any patient who comes to him voluntarily.
No Decision of the Supreme Court ever sustained a regula-
tion that runs counter to the above theses — provided the
physician is acknowledged to have acted in “good faith.
There is only one way in which a physician can show bad
faith in treating any patient — namely, by not endeavoring to
benefit the patient.
If the patient who seeks aid of a physician chances to be an
addict of morphine, there is only one way in which the physi-
cian can certainly benefit him — ^namely, by administering an
adequate dosage of morphine. Other treatment may or may
not be necessary. No Federal Law forbids such treatment
with narcotics in adequate quantity, for any period whatsoever.
An “adequate” or balancing dose of morphine, for an addict
of long standing, is, on the average, at least ten grains a day;
and it may be twice or three times that, or even more.
No Federal Law forbids the reduction treatment of addic-
tion, as such, in an ambulatory patient. A “regulation” of the
Narcotics Bureau warns against such treatment; but no decision
Can You Believe?
6i
of the Supreme Court ever sustained this ruling — if the physi-
cian is adjudged to have acted in good faith.
No Law on the Statute Books distinguishes between cur-
able and incurable diseases associated with addiction. The
“regulation” that permits treatment of incurable maladies only,
is a barbarism that has never been sustained by the Supreme
Court.
The question of diagnosis, whether correct or incorrect, has
no status or bearing in statute law. If a physician honestly be-
lieves that morphine, in any dose, will benefit the patient, he
is entitled to give it; and no law on the statute books ever for-
bade him to do so — whether or not he makes any diagnosis
other than “need of morphine.”
The Supreme Court, in the Linder case, upheld the right of
a physician to give morphine for pure addiction; so did Judge
Bowen in the Ratigan case (October, 1934). To deny this
right would be fundamentally absurd. Yet this absurdity has
been stock doctrine of the proponents of the Blackmail Code
from the outset — a doctrine still strenuously maintained in de-
fiance of common-sense, law, and repeated decisions of the
Supreme Court of the United States.
BOOK II
Execution hy Qode
Chapter IX
tA Few typical Qases
I T IS mildly amusing — if a paradox pleases you — ^to reflect
that the trial in a Federal Court at Los Angeles, designed
to close permanently the Narcotics Clinic, in which the Federal
authorities opposed the State and municipal authorities, started
on the day following that on which Attorney General Cum-
mings announced his project for a Crime conference to
coordinate the activities of the Federal Government and the
States in the interests of law and order.
This most flagrant example of interference of the Federal
Government with State authority (in opposition to the Con-
stitution as interpreted by the Supreme Court) was still in
progress at the time when the Crime Conference met at
Washington. And the President made a speech about the en-
deavor to combat the “ravages of the illicit drug traffic” at the
moment when the Federal Court was determining that seventy
patients (minus a few that had died) must be thrust back into
the hands of the illicit drug traffickers, from which the State
and municipal authorities had previously rescued them.
Query: Does this illustrate mere dumbness or a Gargantuan
sense of humor on the part of the Government representatives
at Washington? Be that as it may, it spelled disaster for the
Los Angeles outcasts. Let me briefly present case histories of
a few of them, from official records.
First, a group who, in desperation, voluntarily presented
themselves before Judge Thomas C. Gould, at the Lunacy
6s
66
Drug Addicts Are Human Beings
Commission Court, and begged to be committed to the State
Narcotic Hospital at Spadra.
Judge Gould and his medical associates knew that these
patients were not proper subjects for Spadra, since that institu-
tion is supposed to deal with curable addicts, and these were,
by hypothesis, incurable, else they would not have been dealt
with at the Clinic. But the Court could think of no other
action that gave even a suggestion of promise, so it grasped at
this straw.
Dr. Thomas F. Joyce, Superintendent at Spadra, was sym-
pathetic — as who but a Federal narcotics agent would not be
but he had no resource. His official report, made to Judge
Gould under date of July 11, 1934, reads as follows:
“I am calling your attention to the following cases who were
examined at a special Narcotic Clinic held by our medical staff
July 10, 1934 (names omitted).
Case No. 1. Committed by you May 29, 1934. It was found
that this man was a constitutional psychopath with no chance
whatever, we felt, of being reclaimed. He has spent two years
at Fort Leavenworth and it was decided that the State has litde
to gain in attempting to relieve this man of his addiction.
Case No. 2. Committed by you July 2, 1934. This man was
also found to be a constitutional psychopath and from his record
and psychological examination it is felt he offers no hope of
ultimate cure.
Case No. 3. Committed by you July 5, 1934. A former
patient of the Los Angeles Narcotic Clinic. May I say this
man is a constitutional psychopath. He has been receiving
drugs for quite some time with a diagnosis of traumatic bron-
chitis and neuritis resulting from a bullet wound years ago.
This man is characterized as a chronic narcomaniac and it was
the unanimous opinion of the staff that the institution could in
no way be of benefit to him.
A Few Typical Cases 67
Case No. 4. Committed by you July 7, 1934. Also a former
patient of the Los Angeles Narcotic Clinic, This man is suffer-
ing from chronic asthma, bronchitis, and emphysema. He
is also a constitutional psychopath and may properly be classi-
fied as a chronic narcomaniac. We feel it is a waste of time
and money to attempt the ultimate cure of this man.
Case No. 5. Committed by you June 25, 1934. A former
patient of the Los Angeles Narcotic Clinic. This man is found
to be suffering from a neurological disorder that makes it
absolutely unwise and unprofitable to attempt complete de-
narcotization. Profitable treatment for this condition might be
obtained at some well-established neurological clinic.
Case No. 6 . Committed by you July 10, 1934. This man is
a constitutional psychopath classified as a narcomaniac. He
offers absolutely no hope for an ultimate cure as far as this
institution is concerned.
Case No. 7. Committed by your Honorable Court June 4,
1934. This man is a criminal addict for fifteen years. He has
had numerous so-called “cures.” He offers very little in the
way of reclamation. We doubt if it is fair to impose the
burdens on the taxpayer that this man’s enforced incarceration
here will entail. However, we have not definitely decided upon
his case.
It is regrettable that the State has no place to colonize this
type of incurable addict, but I know you will agree with me
that it seems a waste of public funds to further experiment with
this type of narcotic addict.
Respectfully submitted,
Thomas F. Joyce, M.D.,
Medical Superintendent,
State Narcotic Hospital,
Spadra, California.
68
Drug Addicts Are Human Beings
The seven patients, then, are discharged from the Spadra
hospital, returned to the Court, and sent out into the world
on their own recognizance. What are they to do?
The simple answer is that they are to suffer and to die, un-
solaced by medical attention. Their only hope of partial relief
from perpetual agony of mind and body must be found in the
dope peddler, who will furnish each of them the twenty cents
worth of morphine he needs daily — for about ten dollars. But
where are the unfortunates to get the ten dollars ? They can-
not get it honestly. They are mostly too feeble, too ill, to be
able to get the money by any method.
Their only effectual and practical resource, then, is to die.
Let me cite another official report that tells how a group of
these outcasts found relief from suffering by that route. This
report was written by a hospital physician, member of the
Alienists’ Court, who had first-hand knowledge of the patients
— ^whose names are now given, because publicity cannot harm
the dead.
Eddie Foyer, County Hospital case record No. 270-12 is said
to have committed suicide because of the closure of the Clinic.
He ha^ been in the General Hospital many times, recendy in
February, March, April, and June of 1933. He had been in
Spadra and dismissed as an incurable addict because of in-
tractable asthma.” Registered with the State Narcotic Division
for years. After his death, narcotic officers sent out the state-
ment that he had asthma but was not an addict. Later they
denied the asthma. As two or three unfilled narcotic prescrip-
tions were found in Foyer’s room, the officers declared he was
peddling. If so, why hadn’t he filled the prescriptions and
cashed in? (Comment: He was, of course, an addict, and he
doubtless held the prescriptions in reserve, against the possible
time when he could not secure the drug from a peddler, for
lack of funds. Somewhat as a man in New York, who was
A Few Typical Cases 6^
found almost dead of starvation with forty dollars in his pocket,
explained that the fear of being without money to buy mor-
phine kept him from buying food.)
Alice Joiner, Case Hospital record No. 57-207, died a few
days after closure of the Clinic. She had advanced tuberculosis,
and withdrawal of the drug undoubtedly killed her.
Cloyd Peck, Hospital case record No. 57-240. Diagnosis,
syphilis of the central nervous system; died immediately after
closure of Clinic, undoubtedly for want of drug.
Harry Reed, General Hospital case record No. 112-208, an
old case of pulmonary tuberculosis, died under peculiar cir-
cumstances a month after the Clinic was closed. Someone had
written a prescription for Reed and a man had gone to a drug
store to have it filled. The ofiScers seized the prescription and
rushed over to Reed’s house. Reed’s mother told the officers
that her son was upstairs in bed. The officers rushed into the
room where the patient was lying. In three hours Reed was
dead — his mother asserts that die shock of having the oflBcers
rush in killed him.
Thomas Murphy, General Hospital case record No. 304-036.
Diagnosis, pulmonary tuberculosis, died shortly after the Clinic
closed. Could not obtain drug.
Madge Surber, General Hospital case record No. 56-502. Old
case of pulmonary tuberculosis, examined in hospital many
times; was murdered. She was the wife of a naval ofl&cer who
is permanently disabled with tuberculosis. On the money she
received from him she was able to live respectably and get her
morphine from the Clinic prescriptions at reduced rates.
When the Clinic closed, she became an “agent” for the Federal
officers in order to get her drug. She was beaten to death by
three Negroes because she was acting as stool pigeon. The
credit for her murder goes to the narcotic (official) activities.
William W. Colson, died August 31, 1934, at 10 p.m. in
70
Drug Addicts Are Human Beings
Ward 290 of the Los Angeles General Hospital (No. 9-899 of
the records). Colson was a diabetic and a drug addict. The
hospital could furnish him with insulin but not with morphine.
So Colson went into Court and Judge Gould committed him
to Spadra. But Spadra dismissed him because he could not be
taken off the drug without endangering his life. He wandered
around in misery for a little while and then returned to the
Insanity Court and begged to be sent again to Spadra. That
was on the morning of August 31, 1934. The Court dismissed
the case, but the patient was so sick that the hospital could not
throw him out on the street. That evening he collapsed for
want of morphine, vomited, and was so convulsed with pain
that he fell out of bed and wallowed on the floor. No mor-
phine was given him, and he knew the futility of asking for it.
He did ask to be strapped to the bed so that he could not fall
and hurt himself, and this was done. He was dying, and every-
one knew it — knew also that a dose of morphine would save
him. He did not get it, and he died — of morphine with-
drawal — at ten o’clock that night, in great agony.
William Palmer, died at 5:45 a.m., November 2, 1934, in
Ward 110 of the Los Angeles General Hospital. Cause of
death, heart failure for want of morphine. Hospital record
reads: “Wm. Palmer was arrested by Inspectors Creighton and
Breckner on October 31 (1934), for a supposed sale of mor-
phine and was booked at the city jail for the charge of State
poison. His age was 52 years. He died in the L. A. County
Hospital this (Nov. 2) morning at 5:30. Dr. — of Compton
was prescribing for him. His diagnosis was Advanced T . B. and
he was getting 90 grains of morphine per week. Hospital Rec-
ord shows that he had had no narcotic for two days. Dr. Paul F.
Seitter, Interne on Ward 110, states that the patient did not
have a hemorrhage, but died of straight narcotic withdrawal.”
I am not sure that comment can add anything to these simple
71
A Few Typical Cases
official records. Nevertheless, at risk of anticlimax, I append
a few statements, by way of perhaps needless elucidation. I do
this because the bald facts are so implausible as to be almost
incomprehensible. The records do not make sense. Yet they
are simply true.
That is to say, these are patients whose mortal illness was
attested by competent physicians, acting in official capacity as
authoritative representatives of State and County ; who received
no compensation for their examinations of the patients, and
had no possible motive for making diagnoses except in accord
with their best professional judgment.
The unanimous judgment of these hospital physicians was
that these patients were incurables, suffering from painful
maladies.
Let it be recalled that the Narcotics Clinic, where these pa-
ON BEHALF OF THE BUZZARD
DOCTOR: “But she’ll die if she doesn’t get this prescription.”
NARCOTIC AGENT: “And you’ll get the Pen., Doc, if she does get it.”
72
Drug Addicts Are Human Beings
tients had received treatment, under the conditions just stated,
was an institution conducted at the County Hospital, under
auspices of the Los Angeles County Medical Association (up-
ward of 2,500 members), in cooperation with the Board of
Health, with active support of the Mayor of the city and the
enthusiastic approval of the Public Welfare Association and
the State and municipal Narcotics authorities.
As to the latter point, two State narcotics oflBcers had per-
sonally requested the chief Clinic physician to examine patients
sent in consultation, and apply Clinic tests and methods. And
the chief State Narcotics Agent, Mr. Jack Harrigan, had per-
sonally visited the Mayor and urged him to use his influence
for continuance of the Clinic (at a time when there was ques-
tion of resignation of the chief physician, on plea of lack of
time), giving the Mayor a list of the Clinic patients {including
those in the groups above presented) with specific citation of
the amounts of morphine they were receiving, and definite
request that this treatment should be continued.
Please read over again that last long sentence. Note that the
man who makes the request is the chiej Narcotic Agent of the
State. Why did he make the request? Because, as he stated,
it was his observation, and that of his colleagues, that the Clinic
treatment of these patients had restored such of them as were
before delinquent to lawful and normal manner of living; at
the same time, and by the same token, restricting the market
of the dope peddler, and lessening the work of narcotics officers,
police in general, and police courts; — in a word, making for
law and order, even if the humanitarian aspects of the question
were ignored.
So there you have the estimate of State and municipal officials
as to the work of the Clinic. And you feel the grim humor of
the Attorney General’s proclamation for a Conference to co-
ordinate the State and Federal forces, put forth in the hour
73
A Few Typical Cases
when three Federal officials of relatively high degree were rid-
ing roughshod over State, county, and municipal authorities,
and closing the beneficent CUnic which all other persons in
authority were sedulous to maintain.
As I said, this simply does not make sense. But I cite the
unchallenged records.
Chapter X
What Would You Vo?
H ere are a few more typical cases of drug addiction pre-
sented in tabloid form from the inexhaustible archives
of the splendid White Cross Society of Seattle, an association
outstanding among the few philanthropic organizations that
have a clear comprehension of the actual nature of the mis-
named narcotics “problem.” (There being, in fact, no nar-
cotics problem as ordinarily conceived; but only the problem
of arousing the people at large to an understanding of the
narcotics situation — to an exposition of which the present book
is devoted; as the efforts of the White Cross Association have
been these many years.)
Case 1. Age 37; born in Illinois. Graduate Normal School.
Parents very fine people. Both educators. Father dead.
Mother teaching. He was teacher in Normal School. During
Prohibition began partying, taking drugs for a hangover.
Eventually gave up liquor and used drugs solely. Drifted west.
Became hotel clerk. Married an addict. Now operating a
card game, securing a living anyway possible. Wife is a high-
priced prostitute.
Comment: From Normal School teacher, of fine antece-
dents, to operator of a shady card game. Does this not clearly
show the degrading power of drugs ? Indirectly, yes. But you
miss the point if you suppose that it was the taking of drugs
that caused the degradation. There is every probability that he
would still be a respectable and respected teacher had he been
able to secure the morphine he had come to need in any legiti-
74
What Would You Do?
75
mate and legal way, at a reasonable cost. His descent was due
to the embargo on such attainment. Not morphine as such,
but the difficulty in securing the drug except illegally and at a
prohibitive price, was his undoing.
“His wife is a high-priced prostitute.” This also is typical,
and, mutatis mutandis, the same comment holds. Sometimes
it pays to be a girl. Fairly good-looking and intelligent young
women who acquire the drug habit have the advantage over
their brothers. There is a well-paying profession open to
them — a profession where, as General Booth once pointed out,
the novice draws the highest income. Morphine does not ex-
cite passion, but quite the reverse. Unhke alcohol, it is not
responsible for the downfall of girls, but is rather a restraining
influence — a sedative rather than an excitant.
But young women who become addicts in America enter
the ranks of prostitutes almost as a matter of course; because
not otherwise can they secure the money to meet the exactions
of the dope peddler.
The authorities of the Narcotics Bureau and the Department
of Justice are thus responsible for recruiting the ranks of the
oldest profession. No professional pander competes with them.
There are hundreds of prostitutes who might with full pro-
priety address to these narcotics officials the words of the once-
popular dance-hall skit;
“You made me what I am today;
I hope you’re sat-is-fied.”
And so far as can be judged from the actions of the officials,
they are. They keep up their illegal activities in a way to sug-
gest something akin to sadistic joy. Here are a few other in-
stances of their handiwork of which they will doubtless read
with pleasure, if these lines chance to reach their eyes :
Case 2 and 3. Married couple, born Iowa and Seattle. Age
76 Drug Addicts Are Human Beings
32 and 28. Prominent business man. Owned apartment house,
several automobiles; worth approximately $75,000. He became
addicted while in business. She followed shortly after. To-
day they are ruined. She is a prostitute; he is no good.
Comment: Two birds with one stone. Something to boast
about. They might possibly manage, say, ten or fifteen dollars
a day, to pay the peddler. But the toll for two — twenty or
thirty dollars a day? Not a chance in the world, by honest
means. Except, of course, that oldest profession — where the
background of culture insures fine patronage for a time.
The next case is less alluring from the sadistic standpoint, yet
it has its points :
Case 4. Born Michigan. Age 39. Married. Salesman.
Later business man. 32nd Degree Mason. Could not stand
prosperity and started drinking; switched to drugs. Lost busi-
ness. Unable to secure employment. War veteran; pension
$47.50 per month. Now steals typewriters in high schools for
a living. Wife obliged to support herself, though loyal to him
and hopeful of cure. Very well educated, fine woman. Work-
ing on night shifts in baker shop. This is the aftermath of a
beautiful home, automobiles, servants, etc.
Comment; Wife hopeful of cure. She is indeed an optimist.
For she lives in the one country in the world where it is for-
bidden even to attempt to cure such a case as that of her hus-
band. (Not forbidden by law, to be sure; but by a Code that
operates as law.) The one physician in the city where he lives
who has dared to endeavor to cure such cases, by the rational
method of personal administration of the drug in reducing
doses, has been twice arrested, and the second time convicted,
because he dared to defy the Code, and attempt to rescue the
victims of the sadistic conspirators. Mrs. J. will soon learn
that bake-shop wages do not pay the peddler. With her back-
ground, however, she should have no difficulty in making good
What Would You Do?
77
at the other profession, if she can bring herself to make the
plunge. No doubt the coadjutors are watching with interest
her solution of the dilemma.
And here is a case no less attractive in its way, though from
a different angle. Here there is the satisfaction of feeling that
one has the victim fairly trapped — even the one way out being
closed. It is gratifying to reflect, too, that there are thousands
of others in the same predicament. This case, like the others,
is typical — at least in the cities where the Narcotics authorities
have their local reigns of terror in full sway. (Some isolated
cases in small towns, where there is no dope peddler, are not
worth bothering about.) I cite the case chiefly because the
outline ends with a question, propounded by my White Cross
informant.
Case 5. One of two sisters. College graduate. Employed
in office. Parents dead. Out with boys and had an automobile
accident. Injured spine. Confined to bed. Had several phy-
sicians. Since Ratigan trial of 1934 no physician will give her
morphine prescriptions for more than three months. The
case is within the law BUT no physician is convinced that some
day he will not be hauled into court for treating the crippled
girl. This has been going on for several years. What would
you do if this was your daughter ?
Comment: What would you do, dear reader, if this was your
daughter.? Hopelessly crippled. Suffering perpetual agony,
unless under the pain-quelling influence of morphine. And no
physician dares to give her the medicine regularly for fear of
being arrested.
Even after Dr. Ratigan, the most courageous of physicians,
was acquitted, the other physicians were still afraid. And they
had good cause. For the narcotics sleuths, chagrined at the
acquittal, camped on the physician’s trail, with new stool pi-
geons, and again arrested him, on charges identical with those
78 Drug Addicts Are Human Beings
of the prior indictment — virtually putting their victim twice in
jeopardy for the same alleged offense.
And the second jury, with identical evidence and the same
judge presiding, found the physician guilty, on thirteen
counts — ^which might, under the law, justify a prison sentence
of 65 years and a fine of 126,000. (The sentence actually im-
posed was seven years at McNeil Island prison and a fine of
$10,000 ! ) The case will be appealed, of course ; and the ultimate
outcome should not be in doubt — for the physician had violated
no law and infringed no principle of medical ethics.
But in the meantime — during the years before the case is
finally settled — what is to become of the crippled college gradu-
ate, whose sister supports her and could pay the pharmacy price
for medicine, if permitted to secure it on prescription, but who
cannot possibly pay the peddler price, even if she knew how to
make contact with the underworld or could bring herself, in
desperation, to make the endeavor
What would you do if you were this girl’s sister.*^ If the
physicians dared not give her the medicine before, they cer-
tainly will not dare now, after Dr. Ratigan’s conviction. The
coast is clear for the dope peddler, as the narcotics authorities
planned. What would you do.? Or, stating the matter in
practical terms, what can her sister do ? Where is salvation to
be sought .?
The answer is humiliating, but inescapable. This crippled
girl’s only hope would lie in removal to another country. If
she could be moved to Canada, a short trip from Seattle, she
could be given the needed treatment. If able to make a sea
voyage, she might go to Japan. Or to any other country. Any-
where in the world, outside the United States, she could be
humanely treated.
Anywhere else. A humiliating thought, is it not.? In one
Country only, in the civilized world — or, for that matter, the
What Would You Do?
79
uncivilized world — is it forbidden to give solace of medical
treatment to sic\ people who are in agony, even unto death.
I venture to predict that the time will come when that histor-
ical fact will be the chief outstanding anomaly to mark the
record of political activity in America during what I have char-
acterized as the Medieval epoch 1914-1938.
As I said at the outset, it is a record of which one may well
be otherwise than proud.
INCURABLE MALADIES COMPLICATED BY
ADDICTION DISEASE
The Narcotics Code ostensibly permits morphine treatment of incur-
able maladies “such as syphilis of the central nervous system, advanced
tuberculosis, and other maladies well recognized as falling within this
class.”
The dosage of morphine is left entirely to the discretion and judg-
ment of the physician. Any other ruling would be obviously absurd,
since no layman is expected to know anything at all about dosage of
morphine under any circumstances.
But the interpretation of the law by prosecuting attorneys (and nar-
cotics agents before them) is subject to the SUPERSTITIOUS DELU-
SION THAT THERE IS SOME MORAL SIGNIFICANCE IN THE
USE OF MORPHINE. This superstition is precisely kin to the old
superstition that insanity denoted demoniacal possession. It tinges the
whole legal procedure in connection with addiction, and the prescribing
of morphine by physicians.
It is the constitutional right of every individual to smoke cigars if
he wishes to, even though tobacco is very harmful to him. It is equally
his constitutional right to take morphine if he wishes to, even though it
be harmful to him. Superstition aside, there is no moral significance in
either act, in the legal sense — any more than in the allied vice, for
example, of overeating, which is far more harmful than either of the
other vices, in that it causes far more illness and results in far more
deaths.
If, then, a physician is legally entitled to give morphine to a patient
for his PATHOLOGY OTHER THAN ADDICTION, what possible
moral or legal significance can there be in the question of the AMOUNT
of morphine given.? That is purely a medical question. To give mor-
phine in quarter-grain doses for permanent relief of ASTHMA, in a
8o
Drug Addicts Are Human Beings
patient whose system has become accustomed to the presence of, say, five
grains of morphine as a regular component of his blood and tissues,
would be as foolish and futile a procedure as to give one-grain doses of
quinine to a person whose system was saturated with the poison of the
malaria germ.
To attempt to make any moral or legal distinction between the giving
of one-quarter grain and five or ten or fifteen or twenty grains of the
medicine, WHETHER MORPHINE OR QUININE, would be as
foolish in one case as in the other. In each case, it is merely a purely
medical question as to how much of the remedy is required to attain
what is commonly spoken of as “balance” — the condition of approximate
normality of action of the particular individual who is under treatment.
The clearing away of the MORPHINE-MORALITY SUPERSTI-
TION would do for the victim of drug addiction disease what the
clearing away of the DEMONIACAL-POSSESSION SUPERSTITION
did for the INSANE.
Chapter XI
T^he zJ\4urder of Qeorge Qhristensen
TT HAS been suggested that the Narcotics Code was re-
J- sponsible for the death of many thousands of sufferers
from addiction disease within a few months after it was put
forth. The immediate mortality, however, may be presumed to
have been relatively slight, in comparison with the ultimate toll.
The great majority of addicts do not die immediately as a
direct result of withdrawal of the drug. Their suffering is
great, but not instantly mortal. And when, after a term of
years, they succumb to some intercurrent malady (commonly
tuberculosis), the causal relation between drug deprivation and
the onset of the malady may not be recognized. Drug addic-
tion, as such, is comparatively seldom mentioned as chief cause
of death in official records.
Confusion has arisen from the observed fact that the mere
habitual use of opiates, constituting the “drug habit,” does not
appear in itself to tend to shorten life. The bodily functions
become acclimated, so to say, quite as they do to the habitual
use of caffeine or of tobacco, and a balance is struck that con-
stitutes at least a close approximation to normality.
The average intelligent addict strives constantly to keep the
daily dosage at a minimum, and he has little to fear so long as
he is sure of being able to secure a quantity adequate to meet
that need. His troubles begin when anything interferes, or
threatens to interfere, with the supply. Then the factor of
worriment enters, and that, unfortunately (through effect on
8i
S2
Drug Addicts Are Human Beings
the adrenal gland presumably) tends to increase the need of the
drug — calling for a larger daily dosage.
Thus a vicious circle is started — ^which in reality is a
widening spiral that has no end this side the grave. Let me
cite a typical illustration.
On the 4th of March, 1936, a man named George A. Christen-
sen died in the Los Angeles County General Hospital. Cause
of death, as officially recorded: “Far advanced bilateral tubercu-
losis. Morphine addiction.” The death certificate thus follows
precedent in naming tuberculosis as the direct cause of death.
In reality, however, the lung disease was only an intercurrent
condition — ^an incidental condition, so to say. The cause of
the lowered vitality that made the patient susceptible to tuber-
culosis was morphine deprivation, of periodic recurrence, ex-
tending over a term of years.
In effect, death sentence was pronounced on this man by the
Federal authorities, when they closed the Narcotics Clinic in
the summer of 1934.
Effectively, the sentence was “death by torture, with no
definite date fixed for the culmination.” The victim’s power
of resistance proved adequate to prolong the torture-period
over a term of about twenty-two months.
The arrest of the chief Clinic physician took place April 24,
1934; Christensen did not die, as just noted, till March 4, 1936.
But death would have been very welcome to him months be-
fore it came. In ceaseless distress, he had maintained a slender
hold on life, in a world that had no place for him.
Since early manhood, Christensen had been handicapped by
a malady or complication of maladies that no physician was
able clearly to diagnose. For many years, the lungs were not
obviously involved. Some physicians located the trouble rather
vaguely in the abdominal cavity; others in the brain and nerv-
ous system. A surgeon operated, removing the appendix.
83
The Murder of George Christensen
When that gave only temporary relief, he operated again, ex-
plored the abdomen, but found nothing to throw light on the
symptomatology.
There were periods of vomiting and prolonged nausea, and
one physician reported that nothing but morphine had been
found to control this condition. Nothing else controlled the
visceral pains, as attested by various physicians. One physician
reported “gastric crises” treated from time to time, but admitted
that the term had no clear pathological meaning in his mind.
A dental surgeon x-rayed the patient’s teeth; found eight
“badly abscessed teeth,” which he removed and curetted the
sockets, “thinking this would relieve his trouble, but this has
not accomplished the desired result.”
Nothing accomplished the desired result; and diagnoses
ranged from “toxic colitis” to “a neurosis, a hysteria, or some
other non-organic disorder.” Meantime the patient suffered
unbearable pains, and found relief only in narcotic drugs.
Whatever his original malady, in the course of years there
was imposed on it the condition of drug addiction. The ab-
dominal operations had been performed in 1920. By 1927 he
had become an habitual user of morphine.
An honest, respectable and self-respecting jeweler, moder-
ately successful in business, with a wife and two children, he
found himself in the terrifying position of absolute dependence
on a drug that no druggist dared sell him and no physician
dared prescribe. When he could secure eight grains of mor-
phine a day (say a quarter’s worth), he was comfortable, nor-
mal, mentally and physically efficient. Failing to secure the
medicine, he was a physical and mental wreck, in perpetual
torture.
The obvious solution of that would seem to be — ^pay the
quarter and get the medicine. In any other country in the
world — ^in Italy, Germany, Russia, let alone France, England^
84 Drug Addicts Are Human Beings
or Scandinavia — that would have been the solution. In all
civilized countries but one, drug addiction is recognized as a
disease calling for medical attention; and the individual who
needs medicine is permitted to receive it.
But unfortunately for Christensen he lived in the one country
where medieval superstition still prevails — the one country
where sick people of a certain type are considered to be beyond
the pale of human sympathy or pity. So he was driven from
pillar to post for several years, going downward in the social
and economic scale— seeking aid everywhere, and finding it
nowhere.
Then, finally, bearing letters from the Chairman and three
members of the Narcotic Committee of the Los Angeles
County Medical Association (sympathetic physicians, who
dared not treat him personally for fear of the Federal authori-
ties), he found refuge at the office of the municipal Health
Officer, Dr. George Parrish. This benevolent official was by
way of establishing a Clinic where such cases could be cared
for. Christensen was received there as a patient — in spite of
his doubtful pathology — ^and later, when the Clinic came un-
der the auspices of the County Hospital, he continued to re-
ceive attention.
During these years, he was restored to normal business and
social activities. It was as if he had indeed migrated to another
country. He received the medicine he needed, as he would
have received it in Europe or Japan or Australia, and — ^though
far from being a well man — ^he was relatively comfortable, and
able to function as a normal member of society.
Then came the thunderbolt of the Federal mandate, closing
the Narcotics Clinic. And from that hour, Christensen was
doomed. Again he had no resource but the dope peddler.
Again he became an outcast. Now he could secure no medi-
cine except illegally, and then with no regularity, for lack of
85
The Murder of George Christensen
funds. His old maladies reasserted themselves, and new ones
developed. His lungs were now affected, as is usual under such
conditions.
He sought aid at the County Hospital, but could find no
solace there, because they no longer dared to defy the Federal
authorities by giving the only medicine that could relieve him.
A physician who himself dared not risk treatment had writ-
ten this letter:
“Mr. George A. Christensen of 1422 W. 37th St. needs hos-
pitalization. He is suffering from (1) hypertension, (2) gen-
eralized arteriosclerosis and (3) chronic bronchitis. He is also
an incurable narcotic addict receiving 56 grains of morphine
weekly. I hope that you can do something for him.”
The hospital put the letter on file, and the patient went his
weary way. Then, as a last resort, he appealed to the Lunacy
Court, where Judge Bullock presided, with the technical as-
sistance of two alienists. One of the alienists reported:
“He is a medical addict, and narcotics are necessary to sus-
tain his life. He has been examined here in this hospital a
number of times and has been considered a medical addict and
needs morphine to overcome his physical condition. He was
a member of tlie Clinic for a number of years. I do not know
whether they would consider taking him at Spadra (the State
Hospital for Addicts) — they have returned others. But I do
not know what else he can do. No one is going to prescribe
for him. The only thing left for him is to die.”
The other alienist wrote:
“I have known this man several years. He is a sick man,
and entitled to just the same consideration as any other sick
person. The interpretation of the law by the officers persecutes
this man. He will die if he cannot get the morphine he needs.
It is possible that his other symptoms may subside if they take
him at Spadra. I think it is worth while to send him there.
86
Drug Addicts Are Human Beings
This man is deserving of every sympathy. It is a pure case of
persecution when a man cannot be treated when sick, no mat-
ter what is the matter with him. I recommend commitment
for his sake. He has a narcotic addiction disease.”
So the sick man was sent to Spadra. But that institution is
designed for the cure of drug addiction, and Christensen had
long been known to be incurable. The physicians did what
they could, but it was evident that the morphine could not
safely be withdrawn. The Assistant Superintendent, under
date of January 31, 1936, wrote:
“This man has been bedridden since his admission, and due
to his weak physical condition we are unable to complete a
withdrawal of narcotics. He has chronic myocardial disease,
hypertensive arterial disease, asthma, and pulmonary tubercu-
losis also will have to be ruled out. I have been unable to get
X-ray pictures, due to his weakened condition. He is very
badly emaciated, and for the last few days has lost sphincter
control. Urine shows some albumen and pus.
“Since we are not equipped to handle cases of this type, I
recommend that this man be returned to the committing court
so that he may have general hospital care. At the present time
I feel that it is inadvisable to completely withdraw narcotics
from him. He is now getting one-third grain three times a
day, and that seems to be the minimum that he can get along
with.”
It was much less than he could get along with. But at the
hospital he could not get even that. The two chiefs of the
psychiatric division were actually imder indictment at the time
for their administration of narcotics in connection with hospital
service. The Federal policemen had warned the hospital
against using morphine in such quantities as the physicians had
thought essential. One physician had been warned against
The Murder of George Christensen 87
even the administration of apomorphia, which is used solely
as an emetic. Los Angeles was living under what has been
aptly termed a reign of terror, and even the Health Commis-
sioner dared not treat a single case of drug addiction. The
President of the County Medical Association (an organiation
having more than two thousand members) had thrown up
his hands at the very thought of defying the Federal authorities.
So any physician who had attempted to solace this patient —
victim now of half a dozen incurable maladies — ^would have
made a bid for the penitentiary. At last, however, Christensen
was to find a way of outwitting the Federal authorities. On
the fourth of March, 1936, he died. Thus finally he demon-
strated that his symptoms were not altogether faked. All
things come to him who waits.
Does it please you to think that you live in the only country
in the world where lingering executions like this are carried out
systematically day by day, with narcotics policemen of the
Federal Government standing by, to see that no guilty man
escapes ?
EXEMPT PREPARATIONS
When the Harrison Narcotics Law was passed in 1914, representa-
tives of patent and proprietary medicines were busy in the lobby, with
the result that a section was tacked on to the Act, providing that its
exactions shall not apply to any preparations that contain no more
than two grains of opium, one grain of codeine, a quarter-grain of
morphine, or an eighth-grain of heroin to the ounce.
Presently an anomalous situation developed. An addict could go
to a drug store and, over the counter, secure the drug he needed, with
perfect legality; whereas, had he secured the same drug on a doctor’s
prescription, he might be indicted for a felony, and along with him
the doctor who wrote the prescription and the druggist who filled it.
The amount of opiates put out in exempt preparations is about one-
fifth of the total legitimate importation, year by year; — a quantity
which, if all of maximum strength, in two-ounce bottles, would make an
unbroken line (a pipe-line of “dope” so to speak) from New York to
Los Angeles. For prescribing an infinitesimal fraction of this quantity
88
Drug Addicts Are Human Beings
o£ the same drugs, 25,000 physicians have been arraigned as criminals,
and upward of 3,000 have served sentences in Federal Penitentiaries,
which seems a bit paradoxical.
And, to cap the joke, the Bureau that arraigns the physicians and
permits the babies of the nation to get tons of “dope” without medical
supervision, has been actively engaged for several years past in the
ardent endeavor to prevent the administration of the same drugs to
race horses — though just what the moral implications may be of such
administration of a sedative is not quite clear.
SURE, GIVE THE KID ALL YOU WAMT '
TD, BUT DOMT LET THE PONY HAVE
ANY -1T5 AGAINST THE LAW!
Chapter XII
Execution by Qode
"pERHAPS, now, a few words of interpretation may not be
-L amiss, to make unequivocally clear the rationale of death
by torture as administered to Christensen and to tens of thou-
sands of similar cases during the past fifteen years. It may be
urged that nothing in the Harrison Act prohibits the treatment
of such a case; and that even the Narcotics Code contains a
clause expressly permitting the treatment of “exceptional cases”
where addicts suffer from other incurable diseases. Why could
not Christensen be treated under this exempting clause by any
physician
The answer is found, by implication, in the words of the
exempting clause itself. These occur in the famous Article 85
of the “Regulations” of the Internal Revenue and Prohibition
officers. This article declares that a prescription issued to an
habitual user of narcotics for the purpose of “keeping him
comfortable by maintaining his customary use” is not a legal
prescription (the writer, the recipient, and the filler of such a
prescription are all pronounced felons). But exception is
made:
“In the treatment of incurable disease. Such as cancer, ad-
vanced tuberculosis, and other diseases well recognized as
coming within this class . . .”
“Cancer, advanced tuberculosis, and other diseases well recog-
nized as coming within this class”
What are these diseases, please? And by whom are they
well recognized as coming within this class? At least a score
89
90
Drug Addicts Are Human Bemgs
of physicians of exceptional repute examined Christensen in
the course of ten years or so. All agreed that he was a sick man,
but no two physicians made precisely the same diagnosis, and
no one physician felt sure that his own diagnosis was correct.
I have before me letters and reports of fourteen physicians,
most of them holding official positions in hospitals and medical
societies; all of them men of competence and exceptional skill
in their various specialties; and they name more than twenty
pathological conditions as observed or suspected in the case of
Christensen. Yet not one of these men would have been justi-
fied in saying that the patient had a definite malady “well
known as falling in” the class of cancer and tuberculosis.
The patient died of “tuberculosis” ultimately, but that disease
had not so clearly manifested itself as to be even suspected in
earlier diagnoses. It was named only tentatively, for the first
time, less than five weeks before the patient died.
What, then, would have been the position of any physician
who had prescribed for the patient the eight grains of morphine
he needed, naming an incurable disease — ^“in the class of cancer
or advanced tuberculosis” — as the justification for the “ex-
emption”? Why, inevitably the physician would have been
called on by the Federal narcotics authorities to justify his
diagnosis — this being the invariable custom. And then a dozen
other physicians would have been called, and forced to testify,
however reluctantly, that they had examined the patient and
failed to find any symptoms of the malady named. Even had
“tuberculosis” been the diagnosis, there would be hospital
records available to show that examinations made by hospital
physicians contain no mention of that malady.
And the sequel ? Why, statistically, the chances are ninety-
five in a hundred that the physician who treated the patient in
all honesty, out of sheer compassion, would be convicted of the
felony of “violation of the Harrison Law,” and subjected to the
Execution by Code 91
possibility of a two-thousand~dollar fine and five years in the
penitentiary for each and every prescription written.
Does this seem fantastic? It is fantastic. But I am citing
merely the conventional method of the Federal narcotics
authorities in dealing with any physician who dares to prescribe
narcotics for any sick man or woman, the subject of addiction
disease, who is not actually and permanently bedridden. Any
physician who prescribes narcotics for an addict who is able to
come to his office (no matter what the other maladies that
afflict the patient may be) invites disaster — and may be sure the
invitation will be accepted. The court records of thousands of
cases prove it.
But just what is the point ? Simply this : A patient able to
visit a doctor is also physically able to seek a dope peddler — and
will do so if prevented from going to the doctor.
That is the whole story. A permanently bedridden patient
is out of reach of the dope peddler. From the standpoint of
the peddler, he is a lost customer in any event. From the
standpoint of the peddler’s coadjutor, the Federal narcotics
agent, it would be dubious procedure to arrest the physician,
because, even with the aid of a friendly judge, it might be
difl&cult to convince a jury that it is a felony for a physician to
give solace to a patient who is actually on his death bed.
Meantime, however, the majority of physicians have become
so thoroughly terrorized that they hesitate to prescribe the
needed narcotic for even a moribund patient who is an addict,
whatever his other maladies. The case of Christensen illustrates
that point. And the case is typical of tens of thousands.
Had any one of the dozen physicians to whom Christensen
applied — after the Federal authorities closed the Clinic — ^been
courageous enough to prescribe for him the eight grains of
morphine that he needed — that physician would have been
arrested and probably convicted of felony. Which is not what
92
Drug Addicts Are Human Beings
I started to say. What I mean to say is, that if Christensen had
in any way been able to get eight grains of morphine day by
day (had he, for example, been able to emigrate to any other
country — I had almost said any civilized country) he would, in
all probability, have lived many years longer. He did not really
die of tuberculosis. We have seen that tuberculosis was not
even clearly diagnosed a few weeks before he died. “Tubercu-
losis” on the death certificate was a mere camouflage word.
Nor was it accurate to add “morphine addiction.” The patient
did not die of morphine addiction. He died for lac^ of mor-
phine.
And the “Government” that forbade him to receive the medi-
cine without which he could not live, was the sick man’s official
executioner. That may not be a pleasant thought, but it is
inescapable.
A cruel execution, certainly’, but not unusual, since tens of
thousands of victims have gone to their doom along the same
route in the years of dominance of the Narcotics Code.
Christensen was the eighth known victim among the little
company of seventy Clinic patients whom the Federal authori-
ties turned back to the dope peddler. I think I am right in
saying that no physician who attempted to solace one of these
victims escaped arrest by Federal authorities. At the time of
Christensen’s death, three physicians of the hospital staff (two
of them former Chairmen of the Narcotics Committee of the
County Medical Association) were still under indictment for
their humane and gratuitous work in conduction of the Clinic.
One physician had been tried, convicted, and given a two-
year sentence (with probation), because he examined a stool
pigeon addict in his office, in the regular course of his profes-
sional business, and correctly diagnosed the case, without ad-
ministering or prescribing narcotics or giving treatment of any
kind.
Execution by Code
93
Another physician, enmeshed in the same entrapment enter-
prise through which the Clinic was closed, was given a year’s
prison sentence, without probation, for treating a stool pigeon
addict whose pathology was far more pronounced than was
Christensen’s — so far advanced, indeed, that he died a few
months later, even though, as a Government employee, he was
able to secure the morphine (from ten to twenty grains a day)
to meet his addiction needs.
This patient was able to conserve the morphine prescribed by
the physician, and exhibit it in court, because the Government
supplied him, or permitted him to secure, an equal quantity of
the same drug day by day. On the witness stand, he admitted
that he had had his “shot” that morning. And the United
States prosecuting attorney stated (when defense counsel asked
to have the witness deprived of the drug) that if the morphine
were withheld “we would have a maniac on our hands.”
Do I make the case clear? For prescribing for this patient
(supposing him to be a movie actor, and knowing that he
could not continue at work, or even maintain sanity without
the drug), the physician, who at the same time treated the
patient for syphilis of the central nervous system (of which,
presumably, he died a few months later) — for prescribing a
minimum quantity of morphine for this patient, in connection
with antisyphilitic treatment, this physician was convicted of
five felonies (one for each prescription), and given sentence of
thirteen years imprisonment, adjusted to run concurrently so
as to involve one year of actual prison confinement and five
years’ probation, during which time no narcotics must be
prescribed.
If I have made myself understood (the bare recital seems so
fantastic as to challenge credence; but I speak by the record
and from personal knowledge) — if I make myself understood,
I think you will not wonder that no physician dared to give
94 Drug Addicts Are Human Beings
solace to the unfortunate Christensen, whose tragic story is
above epitomized.
I hope I have made apparent the pertinence of the chapter-
heading, “Execution by Code.”
I venture to hope you have found it an edifying story. Think
of the story as typifying perhaps ten thousand cases per annum
for the past fifteen years, and you begin to envisage the essen-
tials of the period of Dark Age history which I speak of as the
time of the American Inquisition.
STORY OF A WOMAN DRUG ADDICT
(Taken from the Congressional Record for June 30, 1922.
The original is a letter sent to Congressman Dr. Lester D.
Volk, and by him introduced in connection with his speech on
the Necessity of Drug Investigation. By Nea Service.)
“1 am a nurse 43 years old, a widow with one son. I have been a
morphine addict for more than twenty years. My son was born an
addict, but I cured him in babyhood — the only time, it seems to me,
when addiction can be cured.
“When I was twenty I became ill with appendicitis and a complica-
tion of internal troubles. I was sick for three years and had many
treatments, and finally had to be operated on.
“The doctors gave me morphine, but never steadily enough to cause
addiction until the last attack, which lasted seven months.
“The doctors stopped the morphine at the time of the operation.
They lectured me about will power and warned me not to let the mor-
phine get a hold on me. I never had any enjoyment out of it, except
relief from suffering. But the damage was already done.
“When they stopped the morphine, I became a wreck. I could not
sleep. I was deathly sick.
“I was without morphine for two or three months. Pains, weakness,
nervousness, and sleeplessness were driving me insane. I had to have
relief. I thought I could take morphine to relieve my suffering and
quit when I was well.
“I married before I fully realized I was an addict. When I finally
found out that I could not stop the morphine I was nearly wild with
suffering. My husband and I talked it over and he finally insisted that
I must stop trying to do without it.
“Then we began a search for some doctor who would save me. We
tried and tried, without success — and then baby was born.
'Execution by Code 95
“He was a fat, healthy-looking baby. Then suddenly the nurse
wouldn’t let me see him. I knew something was wrong.
“I got up out of bed and went to him. He was blue and drawn
and looked as if he were dying. He looked just the way I did when
I needed morphine.
“We sent for the doctor and told him our fears. The baby seemed
to be dying and the doctor gave him a little dose of morphine and in
20 minutes he was fine and quiet, with a good color and a healthy look.
“My baby had been born a morphine addict.
“I had the most awful ideas of killing myself and the baby, too.
And then I made up my mind I would save him somehow.
“It tore the heart out of me to see the way he suffered. He would
draw up his little legs and shriek and moan and you’d think he would
cry himself to death.
“I insisted that he should not have any morphine except just when
it would keep him from dying. He only got a few doses, but for 18 or
19 months he was awfully sick.
“We stuck it out, and my baby lived and began to get stronger, and
was completely cured.
“But now I am terrified at what will happen to him if anyone ever
gives him an opiate in case something happens to him.
“What I need is another operation. But I can’t because there is no
hospital I can find that will take care of my addiction.
“I wish I had died when I was born. Or that my son had died in
those first awful days.
“Addicts like me, accidentally placed in the grip of a terrible disease,
are hunted like criminals under present laws.
“Recent interpretations of laws placing narcotic administration in the
hands of laymen who have no medical knowledge of addiction have
made things worse for thousands of accidental addicts like myself, who
now must have opiates to live.
“Everything is playing into the hands of the peddlers. Out of the
hysteria they are getting rich.
“The trouble is the public knows only about the underworld addict.
They class the rest of us, honest and law-abiding, with criminals.”
Comment: Try the mental experiment of putting yourself
in the predicament of this intelligent, law-abiding woman.
Understand, then, that her troubles, instead of being by way of
relief, were only beginning. Congress was to do nothing.
New York was to shilly shally with tentative narcotics laws,
96 Drug Addicts Are Human Beings
presently repealing them all; and then settling under the sway
of the Blackmail Code.
I know nothing of the further history of the writer of the
letter, but one knows what happened to tens of thousands of
similar cases. They were presently denied absolutely the
privilege of receiving any morphine legally. No physician
dared prescribe for them at all.
There remained no resource but the dope peddler. Once in
his toils, under stress of paying five, ten, or fifteen dollars a day
for the drug absolutely required for maintenance of sanity, the
sequel was certain. Not for long would the victim be able to
declare herself honest and law-abiding.
Her only choice lay between suicide and entrance upon the
life of the underworld that she had looked on with such horror.
Vast numbers in the aggregate found suicide the less repellant
course. Dr. Lichtenstein comments on the number who locked
themselves in rooms where they could get no drug, and then,
when the torture of deprivation became unendurable, jumped
from the window. Others went on sea voyages, and jumped
overboard. There were two suicides in a single day among
addicts confined in the Tombs prison in New York.
Other thousands who were not recorded as having com-
mitted suicide, had purposely taken overdoses of the drug, and
thus found the short way out.
And the major part of these cruelly executed victims of
Bureaucratic fanaticism or lust or greed would have lived out
normal, useful, productive lives had they been permitted to
secure by legitimate means a few cents’ worth of medicine
from day to day — medicine without which they could not live;
and which, by the worst appraisal, would have harmed them
no more vitally in body, mind, or morals than you and your
friends are harmed by the cigarettes that you nonchalantly puff
or the cocktails and highballs that you quaff lightheartedly.
Chapter XIII
<iA Qame of "Bluff
A S YOU scan the record of the closing of Narcotics Clinics
by Federal authorities, this question has perhaps come
into your mind:
Under what Law does a Federal Bureau have authority to
“order” the closing of State or municipal institutions engaged
in a humane and beneficent enterprise?
The answer is very simple. Under no statute — no written
law. The predatory act is backed merely by the law of human
nature which makes us all cringe a little (or a good deal) at the
magic name, the “Government.” It is just a game of bluff, with
no legal backing whatsoever.
But how, conceivably, can such a game be worked over and
over, in half a hundred communities, from Coast to Coast?
Now the answer is not quite so simple; yet there is no mystery
about it. The bluff works because it has back of it an organized
company of Federal authorities who stand ready to cooperate
in support of a mandate which a Government Bureau issues in
the alleged interests of law and order and the “peace and
dignity of the United States.” And you may be sure that such
blatant claims are trumpeted by the Narcotics Bureau when-
ever it makes descent on sponsors for any Clinic that is rescuing
customers from the dope peddler.
If it is found necessary, in order to break up the Clinic and
support the dope peddler, to bring suit against the physicians
who conduct the Clinic, the United States Attorney, tipped off
from Washington (at least he will so assert), will bring an
97
98 Drug Addicts Are Human Bangs
indictment that names no factual crime (diere being none to
name), but which asserts that the writing of a prescription was
an overt act “contrary to the statute made and provided and
subversive of the peace and dignity of the United States.”
And, with rare exceptions, a Federal District Judge can be
found who is either ignorant of the Law or susceptible to the
right influences for the upholding of the illegal depradation of
the Narcotics Bureau.
Even so, it is interesting to note that in recent years the
Narcotics Bureau has not had the audacity to support its blufif
with any written order, nor to claim that it has any legal right
to stop a narcotics clinic from functioning. The decisions of
the Supreme Court in the Linder case, the Boyd case, the
Nigro case, the Strader case, etc., declaring that the Congress
never intended to attempt the unconstitutional absurdity of
regulating the practice of medicine, have not been quite with-
out effect — though of course never quoted in the modified
Codes, which continued to cite earlier decisions of more dubious
character.
The authorities, indeed, were so fully aware of their legal
helplessness that they permitted the most important of Nar-
cotics Clinics, at Los Angeles, to operate for about three years
unmolested. Nor would they have ventured to interfere even
then, had not pressure been brought to bear by the big business
man in Los Angeles, who is the head of the illicit drug ring in
the western half of the United States. And this co-owner of
the billion-dollar bankroll, who for three years had been only
mildly irritated by the operation of the Clinic (after all, what
is the loss of a mere quarter of a million dollars a year ? ), would
in turn have refrained from interfering, had not a movement
been developed to extend the Clinic method, together with a
plan to have the California narcotics laws so modified as to
permit the rationing of all addicts, regardless of “other pa-
A Game of Bluff 99
thology” with an adequate dose of morphine, under medical
supervision.
Such a law, if enacted, would take out of the market of the
dope peddler, not merely seventy customers, as did the Los
Angeles Clinic, but an estimated four thousand addicts who
were ineligible for treatment at the Clinic because they had not
the (paradoxical) good fortune to have acquired any other
“incurable disease such as cancer, advanced tuberculosis and
other diseases well recognized as coming within this class.”
It became absolutely necessary, then, to nip this movement in
the bud. The campaign to raise funds for publicity must be
squelched, and the Los Angeles boss-racketeer now insisted
that an effort should be made to stop the existing Clinic, the
success of which afforded the main argument for the legislative
movement.
Matters reached a climax in March, 1934, when the White
Cross Society sent out a letter of appeal. There was a hurried
gathering of the clans at Los Angeles. The Washington tele-
phone wires, always freely requisitioned, were abnormally
busy. A really ingenious plot was hatched. The Govern-
ment’s cleverest stool pigeon, ex-convict Charles Clark, was
summoned from Chicago. The barest-faced scheme of at-
tempted entrapment that even the Narcotics Bureau had ever
attempted, was audaciously projected.
Meantime the United States Attorney was fed with assurances
that this was the most important case in the entire history of
the Narcotics Bureau — a statement the force of which can be
appreciated only in the light of that Bureau’s published record
of 27,757 criminal cases, with aggregate prison sentence of
34,662 years and fines of $808,718 during the preceding five
years.
False records were prepared and transmitted to Washington,
to be subsequently returned (in form of “certified copies”) for
lOO
Drug Addicts Are Human Beings
the edification and education of a Federal Judge, whose official
assistance was needed to complete the debacle through which
the Clinic patients were sent back to the dope peddler, the
White Cross menace temporarily squelched, and the equa-
nimity of the highly regarded big business man of Los Angeles
restored.
What the coadjutors were really accomplishing, had they but
known it, was something far different from what they planned.
They were undermining the industry that their efforts seemed
calculated to bolster. The closing of the Los Angeles Clinic,
which momentarily restored the dope-peddler market, forecast
the overthrow of the entire illicit narcotics drug racket. The
entrapment feat by which the Narcotics authorities distin-
guished themselves and won plaudits from Washington, was
the beginning of the end of the era of the American Inquisi-
tion. At last the official bandits had overplayed their hand.
The plot designed to conserve the California market was
destined to culminate in the utter vanishment of the billion-
dollar bankroll.
It is true that in speaking thus I am taking liberties with the
future. But I speak with full knowledge of events of no un-
certain augury. The import of my confident prediction will be
better understood after certain other aspects of the story of
public enemies in high places have been presented.
Meantime it may be noted that of ten officials (nine repre-
senting the Government and one the State) who were chiefly
concerned in the frame-up and prosecution that eventuated in
temporary closure of the Clinic, this may be reported: (a)
four Federals (including the United States Attorney and two
Assistants) have been ousted from office; (b) one Federal
(Chief Narcotic Inspector for the District) has been demoted
and transferred; while (c) Chris Hanson, who was Chief
Federal Narcotic Agent at Los Angeles and (d) William B.
lOI
A Game of Blwff
Byrne, Inspector for the State Board of Medical Examiners, are
serving prison sentences.
Furthermore, (e) Vaugn De Spain, a local Federal narcotics
agent who had an offensive share in the Clinic frame-up, was
transferred to San Francisco, but in January, 1938, “resigned”
in the midst of a graft investigation; finally on June 24th, 1938,
he shot himself through the chest (where the heart would be
located if he had had one) and died.
The two other Government ofl&cials are still in office. But
the end is not yet.
f'U IS IWAND ATO Kx — '
FIVE years, D ocroi?-
’ (roR GIVINQ THiS MAN
legitim ATftLY WHAT
The peddler gives Him
every DAv'^RoTEcreDLy**
102
Drug Addicts Are Human Beings
FEDERAL AGENT’S RED HERRING
It has been noted that the Federal attack on the later Los Angeles
Narcotics Clinic was apparently instigated by the imminence of a White
Cross drive to arouse public interest in the establishment of similar
benevolent institutions for the rescue of victims of drug addiction else-
where. While the fate of the Clinic still hung in the balance (since
the Federal authorities did not quite dare to order its closure directly),
the White Cross drive for funds was inaugurated at Los Angeles.
There was immediate outcry from the Federal Narcotics authorities,
with a certain person, who appeared to hold a nondescript commission
as agent at large, in the van. Very soon this agent had the ear of the
gentlemen of the press — as is usual in such cases. Soon the public,
which might otherwise hardly have been apprised of the effort of the
White Cross (newspapers being very chary of giving news in any wise
painful to the dope racketeers) were informed of the iniquitous proce-
dure. Here, they were assured, was indeed a mare’s nest.
The agent’s distress was pathetic. He declared with loud emphasis
that “his Government Bureau” had directed him to fight the enemy
tooth and nail — or words to that effect. And indeed he made it obvious
that there was ample cause for his piteous outcry. He had discovered
that in an earlier drive made by the same organization there had been
scandalous peculation. Public confidence had been grossly abused. Not
all the money collected from a confiding public for an alleged philan-
thropic work had been used in the manner intended. On the contrary,
one of the subordinate collectors for the Society had used funds in a
very dubious manner. The scandal was outrageous.
In a word, the agent avowed — with tears in his voice — the sum of up-
ward of seventy dollars had not been properly accounted for. Seventy
entire dollars, or something in that neighborhood, had been lured from
the unsuspecting public, and used for personal purposes of a minor
agent. Perhaps the White Cross officials knew nothing about it. But
was it not their business to know.? Could a representative of the United
States Government stand idly by and see the public victimized.?
Hardly. The agent did not stand idly, nor silently, by. His cries
were really distressing. And the newspapers gave full publicity to the
affecting spectacle of a Government officer in mental and moral agony.
The danger was averted, and the next steps in the closure of the Clinic
were effected without a word of newspaper publicity.
The press of a great city had not one word to say about the disrup-
tion, without warrant of law, of one of the most important benevolent
institutions in the country — an institution sponsored by County Medical
Association, Health Board, the Mayor of the city, and humanitarians in
103
A Game of Blu§
general — although the purpose and the effect of such disruption was the
throwing back into the hands of the dope peddler of seventy sick people
whom the Clinic had rehabilitated.
The Federal agent’s seventy-dollar red herring had accomplished its
purpose. Dragged across the trail, it had served to lead the news-
hounds off the scent of the racketeers whose toll in California alone,
according to the agent’s own published estimate, was at least $20,000 a
day, or upward of seven million dollars a year, without counting the
added cost of “courts, jails, prisons, and economic loss” through crimi-
nality and vagabondage.
In other words, the Federal Narcotics agent’s seventy-AoW.zx red-
herring adequately hid the scent of a seven-million-doWar racket.
Such a wee bit of a herring. But, in the nostrils of the dope peddler,
of how delicious a fragrance.
Chapter XIV
^Addicts tAre Human beings, not Qriminals
T he perennial babble of the proponents of the Narcotics
Code about the “ravages” of the “dope fiend” may best be
met with statistical data from official records. Here are a few
figures from records of the Department of Justice, as repro-
duced in the readily-accessible World Almanac. They will
enable you to make your own appraisal of the menace spoken
of in a certain famous address as the “ravages of the drug evil.”
Among persons charged with crime and held for prosecution in the year 1933,
in 703 cities, with aggregate population of 30,576,036, the persons held for viola-
tion of:
(1) Narcotic drug laws numbered 2,317, or 7.6 per 100,000 of population
(2) Homicide numbered 3,303, or 10.8 per 100,000 of population
(3) Liquor laws numbered 21,494, or 70.3 per 100,000 of population
(4) Driving while intoxicated num-
bered 23,399, or 76.5 per 100,000 of population
(5) Drunkenness numbered 455,615, or 1,490.1 per 100,000 of population
(6) Traffic and motor laws num-
bered 1,179,287, or 4,180.7 per 100,000 of population
(7) All other crimes numbered. . . 597,489, or 2,064.5 per 100,000 of population
Total number 2,272,489, or 8,490.5 per 100,000 of population
So there you have revealed the fearsome galaxy of narcotics
“ravagers” that have caused fanatics so much solicitude. In
the cities having in the aggregate about one-fourth the popula-
tion of the country, there were 2,317 of these ravagers inter-
cepted, while the arrests of murderers, thieves, drunken drivers
and all the rest of the law-breakers numbered only 2,270,172.
(Figure the percentage for yourself.) For every milfion of
the urban population, 76 ravagers against 84,829 minor offend-
ers, from murderers and rapists to drunks and vagrants.
Something to think about with apprehension, surely.
If you live in a smaller city, to be sure, the menace is much
104
Addicts Are Human Beings, not Criminals 105
decreased. It is recorded that in cities of from 50,000 to 100,000
population, the narcotics arrests number only 4 per hundred
thousand. In cities of the next smaller group, only at the rate
of 3 per hundred thousand; and in cities under 10,000, only 1.6
per hundred thousand — or a fraction of one ravager per annum
for each such city; — say one-sixth of a ravager for your town,
if it has 10,000 inhabitants; or (to avoid mayhem) one entire
ravager in six years.
It seems rather a pity to have caused the famous speaker above
referred to so much anxiety over so relatively mild a menace,
does it not? His urgent plea that we get busy and make new
State laws along the lines of the Blackmail Code (though he
didn’t state it just that way) in the interests of the illicit drug
traffic was doubtless music in the ears of the dope peddler; but
perhaps hardly calls for special sessions of State legislatures.
Suppose we laugh with the Narcotics authorities and dope
peddlers and let it go at that.
Meantime reference should be made to one other comedy-
feature of the occasion on which the speech was made — ^an
occasion that has been not inaptly termed the “Day of Dupes.”
I mean the widely heralded “round up” of narcotics offenders
staged by the Federal authorities. Several hundred arrests
were made — as they might be made any day of the year were
there not ample reasons for not making them; — these reasons
being, first, the fact that this would interfere too much with the
regular business of the dope peddler; and, secondly, that the re
si^no jail-room available to which one-tenth of the addicts could
be committed if they were intercepted.
A third reason, of altogether minor significance is that the
addicts are by and large a quiet, peaceable, inoffensive group of
citizens, whom the police are glad to leave unmolested. Their
“ravages” are known only in dupes-day vocabularies, as we
have seen.
io6
Drug Addicts Are Human Beings
It may be objected, however, that the statistics above pre-
sented refer to arrests for violation of narcotics laws only; and
that addicts may violate other laws. This is true enough; but
it is also true that addicts as a class are very little prone to
violate any laws if they can avoid it. Their peculations are
committed almost exclusively to obtain money with which to
meet the exactions of the dope peddler, and they consist of
crimes of minor character. Fortunately for our present purpose,
statistics are available that not only tell us what these peculations
are, but also give data for estimating the relative importance of
the crimes of all kinds committed by our nnfn rmnate nar cotics
addicts.
The statistics in question are furnished me by Mr. Everett G.
Hoffman, of Seattle, one of the founders of the White Cross
Association on Drug Addictions, and among the foremost stu-
dents of the subject. As official special investigator, he has in
progress a census of the addicts of the State of Washington,
which bids fair to be the most important contribution to the
study of addiction in all its phases that has been made in this
country at any time. I am fortunately able to cite certain data
from yet unpublished statistical tables.
Seattle is a city of 360,000 inhabitants. It therefore falls in
the category of cities having a much higher than average
incidence of narcotic-law violators in the Government lists —
the rate for all cities of over 250,000 inhabitants being 11 arrests
per annum, as against the average of 7.6. Records are available
of all arrests in Seattle for the past twenty-five years.
In Mr. Hoffman’s statistics, arrests for drunkenness and for
traffic violations are not included. This obviously reduces very
markedly the total number of arrests. Yet even with these
groups excluded (and drunkenness, surely, might justifiably be
compared with narcotic addiction), (he total arrests for viola-
tions of law by drug addicts, including addicted peddlers, is
Addicts Are Human Beings, not Criminals 107
only 1% per cent of total arrests. (Peddlers and smugglers
not addicted account for '•^/q of one per cent.)
The crimes for which addicts were arrested were almost
never major crimes. The record shows that, of 1,933 narcotics
first-offenders, 42 per cent were released with no penalty; 42
per cent were sent to jail for 30 to 60 days or fined $10 to $25;
and only 16 per cent were sent to prison. Considering that
mere possession of an interdicted drug counts as a felony under
the Federal law, it will be evident that the prison sentence given
16 per cent of the offenders by no means implies, of necessity,
the commitment of major crimes. In reality, the record here,
as elsewhere, shows conclusively that major crimes are very
seldom committed by drug addicts. Opiates tend to quell
boisterous or anti-social emotions, and the addict’s greatest
dread is that he may be incarcerated and subjected to the cruel
“cold turkey” method of drug-withdrawal.
In support of this view (which is matter of uniform observa-
tion with all observers who have come much in contact with
the victims of drug addiction disease), the Seattle statistics show
that recidivism is only about one-fourth as prevalent among
addict offenders as among other types of criminals. Specifi-
cally, the average number of arrests in 25 years of all criminals
is 12.5 times per individual; whereas the average number of
arrests for all persons concerned with drugs is only 3.06 times.
Does that mean anything?
This will be matter for surprise to many students who have
seen lists in which addicts are recorded as being arrested fifteen
or twenty times. Such perpetual recidivism is characteristic of
certain individuals, who know that the jail to which they will
be sent has a humane physician. But the very low average
number of arrests is eloquent testimony to the solicitude with
which addicts in general endeavor to avoid conflict with the
law.
io8
Drug Addicts Are Human Beings
Incidentally, since most of them must buy their drugs il-
legally every few days, and since vast numbers of them are
known personally to the police, and could be apprehended at
will, the low average of re-arrests is testimony also to the
sensible attitude of the police — whether their tolerance be moti-
vated by consideration for the innocent addict or for the
peddler who supplies his needs.
Since I have had occasion to say so much that is disparaging,
let me go on record here as believing, from personal observa-
tion, that a very large percentage of policemen and narcotics
officers of the municipal and State forces are genuinely sympa-
thetic with the non-criminal addict, and fully cognizant of the
injustice done him by the Blackmail Code and such local and
State laws and regulations as have been based on that iniquitous
document-
That consideration, though introduced here only by the way,
is not altogetlier without pertinence to our theme of the
moment. Thntjens of thousands of addicts are known to the
police who are never molested, is in itself a testimonial to the
innocuous character of the average addict. The Day-of-Dupes
round-up of several hundred addicts could be duplicated any
day of the year, of course. Upward of half a million of the
“ravagers” are at large, quite undisturbed. And only at long
intervals and for a special purpose would the dope merchants
(or their big Chiefs) tolerate interference with the regular
routine of their business.
The spectacle of December 10, 1934, will long remain with-
out challenge as The Day of Dupes.
On the other hand, the Week of Dupes, which has become an
annual festival, in February, is a function meriting the full
approval of the high potentates of the dope ring and, of course,
all lesser members of the coterie. As elsewhere noted, the
objective of the propaganda-week spectacle is the development
Addicts Are Human Beings, not Criminals 109
of public interest in the idea of a “Uniform State Law” govern-
ing the distribution of narcotics.
To the gullible public this is being sold as a measure cal-
culated to combat the “dope evil” — the same ravaging menace
that was to the fore in the Day of Dupes. The actual object is
to give full and final protection to the dope peddler. This is
accomplished in the States that have taken the bait (fortunately
few in number) by the enactment of laws forbidding the
treatment of ambulatory addicts — ^which is tantamount, as we
know, to an order compelling ninety-nine addicts in a hun-
dred to patronize the dope peddler exclusively.
It is pathetically laughable to listen to the meaningless drivel
about the “many-headed Beast,” drug addiction, emitted over
the radio by the Presidents of Women’s Federations and such-
like babes in the wood, who mouth the phrases supplied them
by the Narcotics authorities, and who would be horrified to
know that whatever influence their uncomprehending recitals
may have, is exerted directly and solely in the interests of the
dope peddler and his official coadjutors.
An amusing spectacle, this Carnival of Dupes, is it not.?
From the standpoint of the holders of the billion-dollar bank-
roll, a delightful spectacle.
And the rest of us might as well learn to hke it.
A RECENT LETTER
Los Angeles, Feb. 26, 1937.
To Mr. Byron Hanna, President, Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce,
Dr. Geo. Parrish, Health Officer, Los Angeles,
Hon. Frank Shaw, Mayor of Los Angeles,
Dr. John P. Nutall, Pres. L. A. Co. Med. Assn.,
The Editor of the Los Angeles Times,
The Editor of the Los Angeles Examiner,
The Editor of the Los Angeles Herald,
The Editor of the Los Angeles Daily News,
The President of the Ebell Club,
no
Drug Addicts Are Hutnait Beings
The President of the Friday Morning Club.
Ladies and Gentlemen:
This is Narcotic week.
I believe that the public should know the real truth of this narcotic
situation.
I had double pneumonia that resulted in my becoming afflicted with
pulmonary tuberculosis in 1925 and I moved to Arizona, where I was
attended by a physician who prescribed narcotics to relieve the hemor-
rhages that I was having from my lungs.
I remained in Arizona three years and then returned to Los Angeles
and at the request of Mr. Seaman, Trust Officer of the California Bank,
was examined by Dr. Roy Thomas, who reported to Mr. Seaman that
I had pulmonary tuberculosis.
I then went to Butte, Montana, where I was examined by a Dr. Gregg,
who also stated that I had pulmonary tuberculosis.
In 1931 I was admitted to Spadra where an effort was made to take
me off of narcotics. I was detained there for three weeks and was then
told by the Superintendent Dr. Joyce that I was too sick a patient to be
taken off of the drug and never to attempt to have narcotics withdrawn.
I then went to the Stilwell Rest Sanitarium at Banning, where I re-
mained eighteen months under the care of Dr. Gil.
On my return to Los Angeles I re-visited Dr. Joyce at Spadra, who
sent me to Dr. Wm. Duffield and Dr. Steele at the Los Angeles General
Hospital and was placed on the Los Angeles Co. Pathologic Narcotic
Clinic.
When that Clinic was closed I went to the Clinic that was organized
by the Health Department of the City of Los Angeles and was sent by
Dr. Anthony to the Hollywood Hospital for an X-ray and laboratory
examination. I was pronounced as suffering from active tuberculosis.
Dr. Anthony then sent me to Dr. Carl Howson, a tubercular specialist
who made the same diagnosis. I was treated by Dr. Anthony who pre-
scribed for my tuberculosis and gave me the narcotics that I required
to prevent hemorrhages from my lungs.
Today I am without narcotics and am having hemorrhages.
Physicians will not prescribe narcotics for me as they fear arrest from
State or Federal Narcotic officers.
I have been refused treatment at the Spadra State Hospital. I have
been refused admittance to the Los Angeles General Hospital because I
am addicted to the use of narcotics. I am not financially able to go to
a private institution. Unless I receive narcotics I will die. Yours in
distress.
J. Wesley Roberts
BOOK III
The ‘^lac\matl Qodc and the TDoctors
Chapter XV
25,000 Innocent Vhysicians branded
Felons
I N THE course of the past twenty years, upward of 25,000
registered physicians have been arraigned for criminal vio-
lation of one Federal law. According to the statute, the
penalty for such violation ^‘shall be [not may be] a fine of not
more than $2,000 or imprisonment for not more than five
years, or both.”
About 20,000 of the physicians thus charged were allowed to
cancel their “liability,” by payment of what is facetiously
termed a “commensurate sum in compromise” or by merely
acknowledging their guilt and, in effect, labeling themselves
felons. The others were haled to court, and prosecuted.
In about 95 per cent of these cases, the trial resulted in the
doctor’s conviction of the felony charged in the indictment.
About 2,000 of the physicians thus convicted were penalized
only with fines, ranging from one hundred to ten thousand
dollars.
The remaining 3,000 physicians were sentenced to Federal
prisons, to serve terms of from one to eleven years.
With rare exceptions indeed, these physicians regarded them-
selves as unjustly convicted; and such of them as could possibly
finance an appeal made such appeal to the Circuit Court. For
the most part these appeals did not succeed, and the vast
majority of the defendants could go no further. Out of the
five thousand, only 25 were able to carry an appeal to the
1 14 Drug Addicts Are Human Beings
Supreme Court of the United States, on petition for writ of
certiorari.
In all but six cases, this writ was denied. These six cases, and
six only (out of five thousand) ultimately gained a hearing
before the Supreme Court. In two of these cases, the verdict of
the lower courts was reversed. In three cases the verdict was
affirmed unreservedly. In the remaining case, the verdict was
affirmed, with the comment that the trial judge had in one
instance mis-stated tlie law, but that the defense lawyer did not
at the time take exception to the false statement, and therefore
“is not now in a position to object to it.” (Boyd case, 1926.)
That is to say, it seemed equitable to the high tribunal that a
probably innocent physician should go to prison, rather than
that a lawyer’s technical error should be condoned.
May a layman be permitted to suggest that this seems a
slightly myopic conception of Justice? However, one mis-
carriage of justice is a small matter, against the background of
25,000 cases in which physicians equally innocent of any crime
have been victimized.
Let me explicitly aflSrm, what this implies, that the 25,000
physicians in question, with rare exceptions, were and are
innocent of the “crimes” with which they were charged and for
which they suffered. In support of this view, some illustrations
of juridical methods are presented in subsequent chapters.
Chapter XVI
Evolution of the "Blac\mail Qode
T he so-called narcotic drugs — in popular parlance “dope”
— to which our “anti-narcotics” laws refer are opium, coca
leaves, and their derivatives. The present discussion is con-
cerned almost exclusively with opium and its products and
derivatives; our chief concern being with the important alka-
loids morphine and heroin. These are the chief habit-forming
“narcotics” of the illicit drug trafl&c. They are also the most
important pain-quelling drugs known to medicine.
Morphine is used medicinally and by the drug addict, not in
pure form as an “anhydrous” alkaloid, but combined to form a
sulphate or a chloride of greater solubility. Heroin is made
from morphine with the aid of acetic acid. Our import laws
forbid the import of these or any other derivatives of opium.
Only the crude product, opium itself, may be imported; and
since 1924 no opium may be imported for the manufacture of
heroin. That drug is therefore practically contraband — ^an
unfortunate tribute to fanaticism, since heroin has great utility
in many cases, as in some cases of cancer, where morphine
nauseates the patient while heroin does not. Other opiates, in-
cluding codeine (usually a derivative of morphine, but some-
times derived directly from opium), are used extensively; but
morphine sulphate is the staple of the physician, and either that
or morphine chloride is the drug most used by the addict.
In recent years, heroin figures largely in the illicit traffic.
There are many other derivative drugs, including recently
developed laboratory products not yet in general use. But it is
IIS
ii6 Drug Addicts Are Human Beings
convenient to speak of the habit-forming opiates, when statistics
are in question, in terms of morphine, the essential alkaloid.
In general discussions, and even in the technical literature, it is
customary to say “morphine” when the drug actually referred
to is morphine sulphate or morphine chloride. Anhydrous
morphine, as such, figures only in manufacturing statistics, and
is seldom or never placed on die general market, licit or illicit.
The Federal law designed to control the distribution of
habit-forming “narcotic drugs” is the so-called Harrison Act,
of December 17, 1914, slightly amended but in nowise signifi-
cantly modified, four years later. The essential purpose of this
law as amended, was to place a special tax on all products of
opium or coca leaves, and to interdict absolutely the distribu-
tion of such “narcotic” drugs to the ultimate consumer except
on authorization of a physician, dentist, or veterinary surgeon.
The text of this Harrison Special Tax law, as issued by the
Treasury Department, with the stamp of the Government
Printing Office, covers twelve large pages, comprising perhaps
five thousand words. Yet there is only a single paragraph —
printed, indeed, as a single sentence — that refers direcdy and
affirmatively to the professional activities of the professional
men who are the sole authorized distributors (directly or by
prescription) of the narcotic drugs in question. Here is the
sentence:
“Nothing contained in this section shall apply — (a) To the dispensing
or distribution of any of the aforesaid drugs to a patient by a physician,
dentist, or veterinary surgeon registered under this Act in the course of
his professional practice only: Provided, That such physician, dentist,
or veterinarian shall keep a record of all such drugs dispensed or dis-
tributed, showing the amount dispensed or distributed, the date, the
name and address of the patient to whom such drugs are dispensed or
distributed, except such as may be dispensed or distributed to a patient
upon whom such physician, dentist, or veterinary surgeon shall per-
sonally attend; and such record shall be kept for a period of two years
Evolution of the Blachjnail Code 117
from the date of dispensing or distributing such drugs, subject to in-
spection, as provided in this Act.”
That is the entire substance of the law, so far as it applies to
physicians.
A complementary provision permits retail dealers (drug-
gists) to sell, dispense, or distribute the drugs “in pursuance of
a prescription issued by a physician, dentist, or veterinary
surgeon registered under this Act.” Another supplementary
provision permits “any person to have in his possession any of
the aforesaid drugs which have been obtained from a registered
dealer in pursuance of a prescription, written for legitimate
medical uses, issued by a physician, dentist, veterinary surgeon,
or other practitioner registered under this Act” (the bottle or
container being fully labelled). For good measure it is added
that the clause forbidding the distribution of narcotics except
in the original stamped package or from the original stamped
package does not apply—
“to the dispensing, or administration, or giving away of any of the afore-
said drugs to a patient by a registered physician, dentist, veterinary
surgeon, or other practitioner in the course of his professional .practice,
and where said drugs are dispensed or distributed to the patient for
legitimate medical purposes, and the record kept as required by this
Act of the drugs so dispensed, administered, or given away.”
These supplementary passages give us not merely the sub-
stance, but the entire text of every reference to physicians (ex-
cept as to the formal matter of registration) in the entire
Harrison Act. The full significance of the references is con-
tained in three allied clauses: (1) ‘*a prescription written for
legitimate medical uses”; (2) . . drugs dispensed or ad-
ministered to the patient for legitimate medical purposes . .
and (3) . . in the course of his professional practice only”
There is no other reference, direct or indirect, in the Harrison
Act to the uses of narcotic drugs. Nor is there the remotest
ii8 Drug Addicts Are Human Beings
suggestion of definition or interpretation of the phrases “legiti-
mate medical uses” or “professional practice” or the word
“patient.” We may well suppose that these familiar terms
were assumed to be taken in their ordinary meaning. The
law-makers were not writing a dictionary.
The dictionary was supplied presently by the Commissioner
of Internal Revenue, whose duty it was to enforce this tax law.
Under the heading “Definitions” he issued a series of 112
“Articles” purporting to explain and interpret the meaning of
various phases of the Law. Most of these articles were more or
less conventional and harmless. But there was one that was
loaded with dynamite. This is Article 85, the first paragraph
of which reads;
“Purpose of Issue. — prescription, in order to be effective in legaliz-
ing the possession of unstamped narcotic drugs and eliminating the
necessity for use of order forms, must be issued for legitimate medical
purposes. ifUi order purporting to be a prescription issued to an addict
or habitual user of narcotics, not in the course of professional treatment
but for the purpose of providing the user with narcotics sufficient to
\eep him comfortable by maintaining his customary use, is not a pre-
scription within the meaning and intent of the Act; and the person
filling and receiving drugs under such an order, as well as the person
issuing it, may be regarded as guilty of violation of the law.”
I have italicised the phrases which, in effect, define the terms
“legitimate medical purposes” and “professional practice” and
“patient” as understood by the Commissioner of Internal
Revenue, and subsequently confirmed successively by a Deputy
Commissioner in charge of the Narcotics Division of the
Prohibition Unit; the Commissioner of Prohibition appointed
in 1928; and the Commissioner of Narcotics, appointed in
1930.
The import of the interpretation is that a drug addict is not a
patient to be treated by the physician in accordance with his
own judgment, and that to make such a person comfortable
Evolution of the Blackjnail Code 119
(supposedly a prime function of medicine) is not a “legitimate
medical use” of narcotic drugs. This interpretation was
clinched in a series of “Regulations” put out by the Treasury
Department, which went a step farther by expressly dis-
countenancing the attempt to treat drug addicts for their addic-
tion unless they were under forcible confinement — though it
was known that addicts were a multitude and that places where
they could be confined for treatment were practically non-
existent.
This set of “Regulations,” supplemented by rulings as to
the manner in which narcotics agents are authorized to “com-
promise” alleged violations of the Law (Article 108), I have
characterized as the “Blackmail Code.” I regard it as one of the
most extraordinary documents in all history.
Chapter XVII
Thysician "Versus TDope Teddler
W HEN the official coadjutors of the dope peddler bring
their indictment against a physician for alleged violation
of the Harrison Law, the conventional charge is that the physi-
cian wrote a prescription for morphine sulphate. Or rather
(usually) five prescriptions, each for morphine. The further
charge is made, as a matter of form, that the physician, in
writing the prescriptions, conspired (in the criminal sense of
the word) either with another physician who examined the
patient in consultation, with the patient himself, or with the
druggist who filled the prescription — so that six “counts” may
appear in the indictment.
Each “count” represents a felony that may be punishable
with a twothousand-dollar fine and five years’ imprisonment.
The strategic value of this method is attested by the fact that
it seldom fails to bring conviction. In 1934, for example, there
were 190 such cases tried in Federal courts, with 182 convictions.
There were 22 other Federal cases tried in State courts or
jointly, bringing the total to 212. And just 9 cases escaped con-
viction.
The prison sentences aggregate 435 years — a lot of “time” to
be served by physicians who had committed no infraction of
any law whatsoever.
The aggregate fine was $26^386.75 — a lot of money to take
from the pockets of physicians very few of whom ever manage
to collect enough money in any year to earn them the privilege
of paying an income tax.
120
I2I
Physician Versus Dope Peddler
But I am digressing. What I started out to say was that the
crime committed by the physician, as charged in the indict-
ment, is the prescribing of morphine sulphate. And I meant
to point out that the indictment is pretty sure to specify that
the morphine sulphate was actually prescribed in the form in
which it is commonly employed by persons who are addicted to
the habitual use of that deadly drug.
That obviously clinches the matter. The physician must
have known that this patient was an addict, or he wouldn’t have
prescribed morphine in that form, would he? The argument
goes home to the grand juror, and later it will go home to the
judge and petit jury. It is convincing.
How should the poor laymen of jury or bench know that
there is no other form in which morphine, as such, is prescribed
for any purpose? How should he know that the morphine
sulphate in question is the identical drug that was prescribed
for him when he had that kidney stone or that broken leg
or when he was smashed up in that automobile accident or to
prepare him for the operation and quell the after pains when
he had his appendix out ?
How should he know, in short, that morphine sulphate —
the drug prescribed for this patient — is the most important of
all medicaments; the one medicine that will quell major pain;
the one drug that every physician carries in his hypodermic
case; the one weapon with which the physician (every physi-
cian in the civilized world) meets emergencies, and without
which he would stand helpless in the presence of agonized
humanity ?
How should he know that the need of humanity for this
pain-conquering drug— a veritable gift of the gods, derived
from a single source, the poppy plant — is so great that upward
of six tons of morphine (or its equivalent) are used in legitimate
medicine in the United States every year — six tons of a
122
Drug Addicts Are Human Beings
medicament the average dose of which is one-eighth of a gram?
A ton comprises 14,000,000 grains. Eight times that gives
112.000. 000 doses to the ton. Six tons bring the total to
672.000. 000 doses.
And that appears to supply about 5 doses for each and every
individual — man, woman, or child — in the country. Or, say,
20 doses for every family.
It begins to look as if we were all dope fiends, doesn’t it.?
All of us appear to be habitues of this poisonous dope. And it
is poisonous, you understand. If all the opiates that we all
consume each year were to be taken by us in one day, we would
all go soundly to sleep, and about the only ones of us that
would ever waken again would be the little group of addicts
who had been getting more than their share before, and so had
become somewhat immunized against large doses. We other
addicts, who have been taking our morphine only now and
again, have not gained immunity, and so would all be dead.
Are we to understand, then, that the doctors handle such a
deadly poison by the ton.? Quite so. That is the business of
doctors. Most potent remedies are poisons, if not administered
in the right dosage and to the right persons. Morphine isn’t
really a very poisonous drug, in the relative scale. The average
dose, as mentioned, is one-eighth of a grain. But a quarter-
grain dose is not unusual. And if you happen to be called to
help a man who is agonized with a kidney-stone or gall-stone,
you had better make the dose half a grain, if you want to
get quick results, and earn the gratitude of the patient.
But suppose you were to give anybody a half-grain dose of
strychnine, or of digitalin, or hyoscine, or of epinephrin.?
Where would the patient be ? Nobody knows. But he would
not be alive.
With a little practice, you could learn to take ten or fifteen
grains of morphine a day, and thrive on it. That much nicotine
k
123
Physician Versus Dope Peddler
— dissolved from the cigars in your humidor — would kill a
hundred men instantly, even though they were hardened
smokers. The nicotine in the cigar you are smoking would
kill you in the blink of an eye, if it all got into your system.
But why, then, all the ballyhoo? Why this chatter about
‘‘poisonous drugs” and “dope” ? If morphine, the greatest bless-
ing ever vouchsafed mankind as a medicine, is the thing we call
“dope”; and if it isn’t very poisonous, but is absolutely indis-
pensable ; if we all take it from time to time, and take it by the
ton in the aggregate, and can’t get along without it — why, in
the name of wonder, do we speak of it with bated breath, and
call our neighbor a “dope fiend” because his infirmity makes
it necessary to take a little more of the drug than we take, and
look on him as a physical pervert and moral leper ? Why, in-
deed ?
If you chance to have the misfortune to be smashed up in
your car this afternoon, your need of morphine will be as
great as that of any addict in the world; and you will be for
the time being a “dope fiend,” and your morals will be per-
verted just as much as those of any other user of morphine are
perverted by the drug — that is to say, not at all.
All of which leaves you wondering why the doctor was ar-
rested for prescribing this indispensable medicine for a patient
who is conceded to have needed it. And wondering still more
why he was prosecuted and convicted and fined or imprisoned.
Surely, you say, the doctor did something quite different from
what the indictment alleges. Surely his crime did not con-
sist merely in prescribing medicine — the most indispensable of
medicines, which everybody takes — for a sick patient. What
else did he do ? What was his real crime ?
The answer is that he did nothing else, and that he com-
mitted no crime.
And the rest of the story is that the United States attorney
124
Drug Addicts Are Human Beings
who wheedled the grand jury into bringing the absurd in-
dictment was perfectly aware that no law had been violated.
He was perfectly aware that in bringing the indictment he
was acting the part of a time-serving politician, under orders
from Washington. He knew that the indictment was a perfect
example of hypocrisy. He knew that every statement of fact
in the indictment could be accepted as fact, without the slightest
reflection on the accused physician. He was perfectly aware
that no Federal law places any restriction on the physician in
the practice of his profession, nor could any Federal law con-
stitutionally do so.
The statement that the morphine prescribed was in the form
used by addicts (when there is no other form) is a typical
illustration of the Pharisaism of the entire document. This
sophistry and the others serve their purpose, simply because of
the profound ignorance of the members of the grand jury of
the entire subject involved.
More than likely some of the grand jurors have a modicum
of the same drug — the deadly morphine — ^in their veins at the
very moment when they find a true bill.
As average citizens, they arc sure to have had their average
share of the drug — let us say, a hundred doses up to the
time when they sit there in the jury room and find a “true bill”
against an innocent physician for prescribing this medicine.
Two thousand doses for the jury as a whole have been taken,
first and last, of this dread dope, morphine.
And they gravely charge a physician with five felonies (with
possible penalties of heavy fines and long imprisonment) be-
cause he wrote five prescriptions, for a patient who needed that
medicine as vitally as each member of that jury needed the
same medicine on the various occasions when he received it,
and was blessed with its pain-quelling benefactions, at the
hands of another physician.
Physician Versus Dope Peddler 125
Odd, isn’t it, when you come to analyze the matter a little ?
What can be the explanation?
I can summarize the purport of the answer to that question
in a few sentences. The motivation of the entire procedure is
simply this:
Whenever a physician prescribes morphine for a patient who
requires the drug regularly, he enables that patient to get the
medicine he needs at a cost of a few cents a grain, at a drug store
— legitimately and legally. But the same patient, if the physi-
cian had not prescribed for him, must have gone for the drug
to a dope peddler, who would have charged him at the rate of
one dollar a grain, or ten dollars for the quantity to meet his
needs of one day.
Otherwise stated, the act of the physician interfered with the
business of the dope peddler. The five prescriptions named
in the indictment called, in the aggregate, for, say, five hundred
grains of morphine — each prescription providing for the pa-
tient’s needs for an entire week. The physician who wrote
the prescriptions (and who is now indicted for writing them)
probably received nothing. The druggist got $20 for filling the
five prescriptions. The total cost to the patient, therefore, was
twenty dollars.
But if the patient had been obliged to go to the dope peddler,
instead of to the druggist, the cost for the same medicine would
have been, not a mere twenty dollars, but upward to five
hundred dollars. And if the doctor had not written the pre-
scription, the patient would have had no alternative, but to
patronize the peddler. As always, “prohibition”— but this time
illegal— leads to bootlegging.
So those five prescriptions, which brought the doctor nothing,
and gave the druggist a few cents’ profit, effectively took up-
ward of five hundred dollars out of the poc\et of the dope
peddler.
126
Drug Addicts Are Human Beings
And the dope peddler, having friends at court, will not
tolerate such robbery. Hence the arrest, the Pharisaical indict-
ment, the hypocritical trial, the grotesque verdict, and the illegal
judgment.
There, in a nutshell, you have the entire story. Solely in the
interests of the dope peddler and the smuggler who supplies
him, 1,293 physicians were “reported for violation of the
Federal narcotics laws during the year 1934.” (I quote the
“Government’s” own oflEcial record.) And that was only an
average record. That is the sort of championship of the dope
industry that has been carried out ever since the industry was
established by the issue of illegal Codes by the Treasury De-
partment in 1921.
During that fourteen-year period, then, upward of twenty
thousand physicians have been sacrificed by the representatives
of the Federal Government to the dope peddler or illicit drug
industry.
Not one in a hundred of these physicians — ^if, indeed, one in
a thousand — had violated the letter or the spirit of any law.
Not one in a hundred had infringed in the slightest degree any
principle of medical ethics. For proof of that, look to the same
Government records, which tell that the State Licensing Boards
decline to revoke the licenses of the vast majority of physicians
reported to them by the Federal narcotics authorities (1,293
physicians reported, with 28 revoked licenses is a recent ex-
ample).
Yet the Licensing Boards are zealous for the upholding of
the highest standards of medical practice and ethical conduct.
It may be presumed that the Medical Boards are not bought
by the dope peddlers. Does this seem to imply that the Nar-
cotics authorities are bought }
State the facts to the Kindergarten class, and see if the
kiddies can find the answer.
Vhysician Versus Dope Peddler
127
A TYPICAL INDICTMENT
Of the two thousand physicians and pharmacists who are cited for
“criminal violation of the Harrison Act” each year, about two hundred
fail to purchase immunity, and are haled to court. The Federal indict-
ment charging them with felony is a stereotyped document, used in
thousands of cases in the past sixteen years — and used most effectively.
This document, issued by the United States Attorney, under aegis
of the grand jury, charges that the physician effected an illegal sale of
morphine sulphate, by issuing a prescription on a given date for a
named person, said prescription being issued “not in good faith, and
not in the course of professional practice only.” For good measure, it is
added that the person prescribed for had no disease for which morphine
is a remedy, and that the medicine was not prescribed for treatment
of any disease; and that, moreover, the morphine ordered was in the
form ordinarily used by persons addicted to its habitual use.
This, according to the indictment, constituted a crime contrary to
the statute and against the peace and dignity of the United States.
The proper answer to this would be that: (a) the physician did pre-
scribe in good faith, because he tried to benefit the patient, and did
benefit him by prescribing the only medicine that could alleviate his
condition; that (b) the prescription was issued in the regular course
of professional practice, since the physician sat in his office and dealt
with this patient as he dealt with patients in general; that (c) drug
addiction itself has been recognized by the Supreme Court as a disease,
and the addict as a proper subject for medical treatment; and that
(d) the form of morphine administered is the only form in which the
drug is generally used in medical practice — upward of three tons of
it being legitimately prescribed by the physicians of this country every
year, in addition to many tons of codeine and other opiates.
Unfortunately, the defense attorney usually does not know these
simple answers. So he lets himself be led off on red-herring trails,
disputing about irrelevant subjects such as the diagnosis of various
maladies; the dosage of morphine for ordinary patients, and the like.
And the jury, utterly mystified as to what it is all about, and supposing
that in any event a mere misdemeanor is charged (the lawyer dare not
enlighten them as to this, and the judge will not), decides presendy to
compromise — and their verdict sends the doctor to the penitentiary,
though they had no such intent.
That is the route which upward of five thousand physicians have
traveled during the past twenty years in America.
Chapter XVIII
The blackmail Formula
I N THE Government Report on the Traffic in Opium and
Other Dangerous Drugs for 1934, some interesting details
are given of the methods by which the Narcotics Bureau keeps
track of the narcotic medicines distributed by dealers licensed
under the Harrison Law, of which, as is well known, there are
five classes, ranging from importers and manufacturers to drug-
gists and physicians. In quoting a very extraordinary passage
on page 52, I break the matter into numbered paragraphs, for
convenience of later reference :
(1) “In any case where the purchases made by any one registered in
any of these classes appear to be excessive, or otherwise open to suspicion,
an investigation is instituted to determine whether the purchases are
incident to improper practices, in which case prosecution may be had or
other penalties imposed.
(2) “During the year, on the basis of this information, 177 investiga-
tions of retail druggists and 451 investigations of medical practitioners
were conducted.
(3) “An appreciable number of these investigations disclosed evidence
of improper sale or dispensing of narcotics, due either to wilful dis-
regard of the law, carelessness, or misunderstanding of the application
of the law.
(4) “Where the evidence of improper sale or dispensing was of such
nature as to indicate wilful disregard of the law, the offender was
prosecuted; but where the offense was of a minor character and at-
tributable to carelessness or misunderstanding of the application of the
law, the case was closed by the payment by ^e accused of a commensU'
rate sum of money to the United States in compromise of the liability
incurred, or by a formal admonition to the accused without such pay-
ment, depending, of course, upon the estimated degree of his culpability.
(5) “The aforementioned investigations were in addition to those
128
The Blackmail Formula 129
initiated by field enforcement officers based on information collected
from sources other than the monthly returns.
(6) “A total of 579 druggists and 1,293 medical practitioners were re-
ported for violation of the Federal narcotic law during the year 1934.”
Comment: The Government makes no further verbal eluci-
dation of the statistics presented, but elsewhere in the Report
are two tables of figures, from which we learn that: (a) of the
1,872 druggists and physicians referred to in paragraph (6),
212 were tried in courts, with 203 convictions, netting an ag-
gregate prison sentence of 439 years and fine of $26,386.75 ; and
that (b) several hundred druggists and physicians (details
later) were reported to various State licensing boards, for rev-
ocation of licenses or other punishment. As to the latter
point, the cases of 599 physicians and 72 druggists were “pend-
ing” before the license boards at the close of the year 1934. The
licenses of 32 physicians and 5 druggists were revoked during
the year.
Since 1,872 physicians and druggists were “reported for
criminal violation” (paragraph 6), and only 212 were prose-
cuted, it would appear that 1,660 of these cases were “com-
promised” under conditions stated in paragraph 4. A table on
page 10 tells us that $18,172.00 was the “total amount accepted
in cases compromised,” but it is not quite clear whether other
cases than those of physicians and druggists are included in this
summary. The total convictions for all classes of violators were
2,674, with aggregate prison sentence of 5,084 years. For the
five-year period 1930-34, the convictions numbered 15,154, the
aggregate prison sentence was 32,262 years, and the total fines
$808,662.00.
As the number of physicians “reported for violation of the
Federal narcotic laws” in 1934 was 1,293, and as only 212
physicians and druggists were prosecuted under Federal juris-
diction, it follows that more than 1,000 doctors were represented
130
Drug Addicts Are Human Beings
in the group for whom “the case was closed by the payment by
the accused of a commensurate sum of money to the United
States in compromise of the liability incurred, or by a formal
admonition to the accused without such payment, depending,
of course, upon the estimated degree of his culpability.” We
are not told what share paid and how many were only “ad-
monished,” but we do learn that 218 cases were ofl5cially com-
promised, with payment of $18,172, which averages about
eighty-three dollars. In the five-year period 1930-34, there were
1,721 cases compromised, with average payment of about ninety-
three dollars, totalling $161,372.
A question at once arises as to who estimates the “degree of
culpability” of the physician who has been “reported for crimi-
nal violation of the Federal law.” The Harrison law itself says
nothing about “degrees of culpability.” It makes no distinction
between the illegal bartering of a grain of morphine, or an
ounce, or a pound. The Federal courts make no distinction.
On what ground can a Narcotics agent be assumed competent
to decide the “degree of culpability” of a physician whose action
has led to his being “reported for criminal violation” of the law ?
If we reflect diat the person who does the deciding is in all
probability the same person who did the “reporting,” the situa-
tion is not clarified. If the conduct of the physician justified a
report for criminal violation of law, then it should be the func-
tion of grand jury and courts to decide whether or not he is
guilty of the crime charged.
And if any individual comes to the accused physician and
offers to let him off from prosecution if he will pay “a sura of
money commensurate to the liability incurred” — that offer is
the kind of thing which, under any odier circumstances, would
be given the simple and significant name of Blacl^mail. I know
no other name by which to characterize it. Just what would
you call it ?
The Blackmail Formula 13 1
That is why I speak of the statement quoted in paragraph
4 above, as the Blackmail formula. Even though the “com-
mensurate sum” exacted be paid to the United States, none the
less it is money exacted by threat and paid by the “accused”
in the hope of avoiding the worse alternative of prosecution.
Chapter XIX
terrorized Trofession
H OW is it to be proved that the $18,172.00 tribute, said to
have been exacted in 1934 and turned over to the Gov-
ernment, represents more than a fraction of the sums exacted
and not turned over to the Government It requires no keen
imagination to justify the suspicion that the blood-money
exacted is not all officially accounted for.
However, for the moment, let us assume that the blackmail-
ing is all done under aegis of the “law” and that only about a
thousand physicians each year are thus victimized.
Let us assume that every narcotics agent is absolutely honest,
and that each one uses his best judgment in deciding which phy-
sicians to send to jail and which to mulct of money out of court.
Still there arises this salient question:
How does it happen that upward of a thousand physicians
each year submit to blackmail? Upward of fifteen thousand
physicians, apparently, have so submitted in the period since
the Blackmail Code became operative — more than ten per cent
of the total number of physicians registered as prescribers of
narcotics in any year.
There cannot have been many of these physicians to whom
even $93, the apparent average, is a negligible sum.
We cannot suppose that there were many who liked to be
blackmailed.
Why, then, have they submitted, and for the most part
submitted in silence?
You may consider, if you like, that this entire book is an
answer to that question. I could not give an adequate answer
133
A Terrorized Profession 133
in fewer words. The whole story of what I speak of some-
times as the American Inquisition and again as the Reign of
Terror is involved. I shall here attempt, nevertheless, to give
a nutshell presentation, which will at least serve as a prelude
for the fuller treatment of matters presented in later chapters,
or as recapitulation and summary of other aspects of the
problem previously depicted.
In a word, the physician accused by a narcotics agent sub-
mits to be blackmailed partly through ignorance and partly
through fear. He is ignorant of the real substance and mean-
ing of the Harrison Law, of which the accuser prates. He
knows something of the Blackmail Code, but supposes it to
be a part of the Harrison Law. He believes that he has con-
formed to every tenet of the law, but is shaken by the agent’s
reiterated assertion that some of his prescriptions (which, of
course, are in hand, the originals with the druggist, the du-
plicates in his office) are not “prescriptions within the meaning
of the Law.” He blanches before a threat like this (I quote
verbatim a recent example) :
“If you give me any of your lip, we will get you just the way
we got Dr. Huntington.”
Then enters Fear. For the “accused” physician knows that
the Doctor in question is one who fought back when similarly
accused, knowing himself to be absolutely innocent of any
wrong doing; and who, for his temerity, _ was framed and
brought into court and confounded by perjured witnesses and
— mark this, please — convicted of writing a prescription which,
hy stipulation of the prosecution, he had never seen or hriown
to exist until he saw it in the court room.
Perhaps the “accused” physician has been in a Federal court,
as a spectator or to testify as an expert, and has there observed
the play of wits — and witlessness — that does service for the
“orderly process of law.”
134
Drug Addicts Are Human Beings
Perhaps he has seen an ex-convict syphilitic stool pigeon on
the witness stand, and heard his word accepted in contradiction
of the word of an honorable physician. For that has happened
again and again.
Perhaps he has seen a judge, turned advocate, badgering and
browbeating a medical witness, warning him against any
reference to the Harrison Law as physicians understand it;
putting answers into his mouth; revealing at once the Court s
incapacity to grasp medical subjects and the depth of his
prejudice based on such ignorance; showing his bias at every
stage of the trial.
He may have heard such a judge, in his instructions to the
jury, distort the meaning of the Harrison Law (in terms of the
Blackmail Code) and so unfairly select for quotation detached
fragments of medical testimony as to direct, in effect, the con-
viction of a physician whose entire innocence was too patent
for sane question.
Perhaps he had learned that the simplest move of a physician
— the mere examination of a patient by appointment — could
be made to take on a sinister aspect.
Perhaps he had seen that, even when every act of the physi-
cian was admitted to be legal in form, the “good faith” of the
act might be challenged, though no motive for bad faith was so
much as suggested.
Perhaps he had seen a case where a physician was convicted
of felony for prescribing ten grains of morphine daily for an
addict patient (a usual and average dose, and in this case the
minimum to keep the patient anywhere near normahty) —
convicted because the rules of evidence were so cleverly invoked
by the prosecution, and so unfairly interpreted by the Court,
as to leave in the minds of the jury the impression that the per-
missible dose of morphine is one-eighth of a grain: suggesting
gross indiscretion or worse on the part of a physician who in
A Terrorized Profession 135
reality had prescribed wisely and well and in full accord with
both law and medical ethics.
Perhaps, I say, the “accused” physician had seen such things
as these. Possibly he had seen or heard of the Government re-
ports showing that about 96 per cent of the physicians brought
to trial under the Harrison Act have been convicted. And he
knew that what these physicians were charged with doing was
precisely what he now found himself “accused” of doing — writ-
ing prescriptions for morphine sulphate for patients who, the
Government would claim, were not entitled to receive the
medicament.
The prescriptions had been written, of course. There was no
dispute about that.
The patients needed the medicine. There was no dispute
about that, either.
But the Government claimed that these patients are outside
the pale of humane treatment, and that to attempt to aid them
is a felony under the Harrison Law. Of course, the doctor
doesn’t know the law.
The narcotics agent is speaking: “You claim. Doctor, that the
patient who you wrote this prescription for has syphilis of the
central nervous system. If so, you were possibly entitled to
write the prescription. But can you prove that the patient had
this malady
“Of course I can prove it. He had a lot of symptoms —
you see them recorded in this record. He admitted having had
syphilis, for that matter, and I gave him salvarsan treatment,
along with bismuth and protein treatment, and his symptoms
cleared up and he gained in every way.”
“So you say, Doctor. But if the symptoms cleared up, they
can no longer be demonstrated, so we can find a doctor who
will examine the patient and fail to find that he has syphilis.
Meantime I have seen the patient [who, in fact, has turned stool
136 Drug Addicts Are Human Beings
pigeon, under duress], and he will testify that he never had
syphilis, nor claimed to have it, and that you gave him no
treatment at all.”
“What ? He’s a damned liar. He took treatment week after
week, and here is the record.”
“So you say. Doctor. And of course I believe you. But after
all it is one man’s word against another. Are you sure which
man the jury will believe.'’ Isn’t it better to play safe.? You
have me near enough convinced so that I feel authorized to
compromise the case, as the Government permits us to do.
Suppose we assume that you only acted carelessly or through
misunderstanding of the law. A ‘commensurate sum’ to com-
promise that would be, say, about a hundred dollars . . .”
At that point something happens. The chances (according
to the records) are about five out of six that the physician sinks
back into his chair, and begins to figure how he can raise the
hundred dollars quite probably not having that much money in
the bank.
The blackmail formula has worked. The agent has earned
his salary and his report will gain him approval in high places.
About one doctor in six, however, is of different fiber. This
sixth man is no more innocent than the others, no one of them
having violated any law, nor even infringed the tenets of the
narcotics Code, properly interpreted. This man, like the others,
has written prescriptions that are in hand, and are being chal-
lenged.
But, unlike the other five, he is a man of the temperament
that will not submit to blackmail.
Call his response pride or obstinancy, or courage, or what
you will. Perhaps mere anger accounts for what he does. At
all events, his response to the blackmail formula is not printable.
The agent who propounds the formula is lucky if he escapes
from the office without a battered face.
A Terrorized Profession
137
THE BILLION-DOLLAR HIGHWAY
The direct annual turnover of the Narcotic Drug Racket (which is kept
alive solely by the illegal prosecution of Physicians) would pave a highway
seven feet wide from New York to Los Angeles witli dollar bills.
138 Drug Addicts Are Human Bangs
But o£ course the end is not yet. This was attempted black-
mail, to be sure. But legalized blackmail. Had the sixth man
been less choleric and more worldly wise, he would have
yielded as did the other five. Since he did not, his name will
appear presently in the roster o£ those physicians whose “im-
proper sale or dispensing o£ narcotics” was due to “wil£ul dis-
regard of the law,” and who therefore were “tried in courts.”
And the chances are just about 96 to 4 that the name of this
wilful physician will be found a little later in the list of those
“convicted of violation of the Harrison Law.” Whether he re-
ceives a prison sentence (up to five years for each prescription)
or a fine (up to two thousand dollars ditto) or both, or is
liberated on parole — perhaps with admonition to abstain from
prescribing narcotics for a named term of years — will depend
upon the state of mind or character of digestion of the par-
ticular Federal judge before whom the case is tried.
A SIMPLE SOLUTION
The persecution of physicians in America, under pretended aegis of
Federal Law, has been carried out (with the aid of unwitting fanatics)
solely in the interest of the illicit drug trafficker — the dope smuggler and
peddler.
If physicians were allowed to prescribe for the victims of drug addic-
tion disease, so that these sick people could legally secure the medicine
without which they cannot maintain integrity of mind or body (or
in many cases, life itself), there would not remain a single patron for
the dope peddler in America; and the bilHon-dollar industry known as
the illicit drug traffic would be a thing of the past.
Thini{ that axiomatic statement over, and you have the clue to the
entire narcotic drug situation.
Chapter XX
JC>egal Vrescriptions by the
D uring the decade 1925-1934, the amount of opium
legally imported into the United States for consumption
aggregated more than 1,300 tons, or 18,200,000,000 grains. The
mean population for the period being about 121,000,000, this
provides upward of 150 grains per capita, or 15 grains as the
annual allowance for every man, woman, and child.
This is but a fraction of the amount of opium required to
supply the alkaloidal products (morphine and heroin chiefly)
illicitly imported; but it is, nevertheless, a notable quantity, and
it is interesting to reflect that every grain of all the billions
might be traced, by ofiScial records, in its passage through
various hands, from importer to consumer. There are live
groups or classes of such intermediaries, with the following
roster on June 30, 1934: (1) Importers, manufacturers, pro-
ducers, and compounders, numbering 218 registered persons or
firms; (2) wholesale dealers, with 1,426 registrants; (3) retail
dealers (druggists), with 49,907 registrants; (4) physicians,
dentists, veterinarians, and other practitioners lawfully entitled
to distribute or administer narcotic drugs, with 144,643 regis-
trants; and (5) manufacturers and distributors of “exempt”
preparations, with 121,200 registrants, including persons or
firms also registered in one or more of the other classes.
It will be seen that manufacturers and wholesale dealers are
few in number. They handle drugs in bulk, and are not
authorized to sell to the consumer. Class 5 registrants are
numerous, but they deal with bottled preparations, manu-
UQ
140
Drug Addicts Are Human Beings
factured in bulk and sold over the counter like any other
patent or proprietary medicines, except that a record must be
kept of each sale. About 18.8 per cent, or not far from one-
fifth of the entire quantity of opium imported, reaches the con-
sumer in these bottled preparations, requiring no written order
from the consumer.
The remainder of the fifty or more tons of opium imported
annually can be distributed to the consumer solely by registered
druggists on the written order (prescription) of physicians,
dentists, and veterinary surgeons. Dentists nowadays use
mostly a synthetic substitute for cocaine, and have no occasion
to use opiates at all, and hence are seldom registered to handle
narcotics. Veterinarians are few in number, and their use of
narcotic drugs appears to be of negligible importance, in the
relative scale. Practically, then, the “narcotics problem,” so far
as the distribution of legally imported opium and its products
is concerned, narrows down to the consideration of the pre-
scriptions of physicians, as filled by registered druggists.
The Government Report shows 67.60 tons of opium im-
ported in 1934 with 18.8 per cent used for “exempt” prepara-
tions. This leaves about 766,460,000 grains of opium to be
distributed on prescription. If we assume that an average
prescription calls for ten grains of opium (or its equivalent in
alkaloidal products) we disclose about 76,646,000 prescriptions.
This allows, for each of the 49,907 registered druggists, about
1,530 prescriptions a year, or 30 each week. The 144,643
physicians (or dentists or veterinarians) average 530 prescrip-
tions each for the year, or 10 every week. (We are concerned
with prescriptions for narcotic drugs only, of course; indeed,
we deal solely with opium and its derivatives.)
I have several reasons for making these calculations. I wish,
in the first place, to call attention to the amount of work done
by the agents of the Narcotics Bureau in checking — ^with careful
Legal Frescriptions by the Million 141
scrutiny as to quantity, etc. — ^76,646,000 prescriptions every
twelvemonth. We are told in Government reports o£ some of
the details of the work — reports to local Collectors of Internal
Revenue, reports to the Narcotics Bureau at Washington, with
investigations based on such reports, and further investigations
initiated by field enforcement officers based on information
other than the monthly reports.
This suggests an enormous amount of entirely useless labor,
highly characteristic of bureaucratic work in general.
There is of course no reason, under the Harrison Law, to fol-
low the drug beyond its purchase by the retail dealer (druggist),
who buys parcels bearing the excise stamp that represents the
last modicum of tax the law exacts.
But there is abundant reason, under the Blackmail Code, for
following the drug on to the consumer.
The essential feature of the Code, it will be recalled, is that
it dictates to the physician as to just what use he shall make of
his prescription blank, when narcotics are in question. In par-
ticular, it forbids him to prescribe opiates to alleviate the suffer-
ing of a patient having drug addiction disease (for the purpose
of “comforting his addiction”) under any circumstances what-
ever. And of course the simple way to judge whether any
physician has disregarded this interdiction, is to check up on the
76,646,000 prescriptions.
This brings us to my second, and chief, reason for making the
calculation that reveals the prescriptions. I wanted to make it
clear that such prescriptions are no rarity. We saw that every
average drug store receives (and must file for two years) up-
ward of 1,530 of these documents every year. Each average
doctor is responsible for 530 of these interesting documents —
or 1,060 for the two-year period during which they must be
kept on file at the drug store and in duplicate in his office.
Wherefore it follows that when a Narcotics agent decides to
142
Drug Addicts Are Human Beings
blackmail some physician in a given community (as is decided
many hundred times every year), he may choose his quarry at
leisure, and gather a formidable bundle of “incriminating’
prescriptions, with full assurance that, if the case goes to trial,
this exhibit will convince any jury that the physician has long
been in the business of peddling narcotics in “violation of the
Harrison Law.”
Of course it may not be necessary to bring the case into
court. A visit to the doctor’s office, and the exhibition of a
packet of prescriptions (absolutely legal and ethical prescrip-
tions, but now given sinister significance by the agent of the
“Government”), will probably engender a desire to “com-
promise” on the part of the guileless man of medicine. If, how-
ever, it is desirable to make an example of some physician of
the community (in the interest of the dope peddler market),
the physician may not even be given the opportunity to “com-
promise,” but may be marked for slaughter from the outset.
In that case, the second act of the frame-up will be the
introduction of a Government stool pigeon — euphemistically
known as an “informer.” The process of entrapment then
goes forward along standardized lines that have proved ef-
fective in many thousands of cases.
Chapter XXI
^ Word ^bout Stool "Pigeons
I T MUST be obvious that the Government would have no
occasion to introduce a stool pigeon for the entrapment of
the physician were any actual crime in question. If the Har-
rison Law has been violated, it was solely by the writing of
prescriptions, which are in evidence — hundreds of them. Why
should it be necessary to secure more prescriptions — written
now for the stool pigeon ?
An interesting question, is it not?
The answer is very simple. It is perfectly clear to the
Narcotic agent that the physician has infringed no law; nor
even the exactions of the Blackmail Code. The prescriptions
he has written are perfectly valid, legal, and ethical. A case
framed with these alone for background could not hope to
succeed, even though backed with all the guile and sophistry
made potent by twenty years of court procedure.
It is necessary to have a paid witness, practiced and un-
scrupulous; an addict who is permitted to receive the drug
he craves, in part payment for his services, and whose further
emolument (I quote from sworn testimony) varies with the
measure of his success in the entrapment of physicians.
It might be supposed that, from the standpoint of the black-
mailers, the case would be complicated by the fact that drug
addiction has been recognized as a disease, and the drug addict
a subject for treatment, by the Supreme Court, as well as in
such a Congressional finding as the Porter Narcotics Farm
Act. But this is no great handicap, because scarcely a Federal
143
144
Drug Addicts Are Human Beings
judge (with the notable exceptions of Justice John C. Bowen,
of Seattle, and Justice Leon R. Yankwich, of Los Angeles) has
had the courage to oppose the Narcotics Bureau, and rule in
accordance with the Law, in contradistinction to the Blackmail
Code. So it will not be held that the physician was justified in
prescribing morphine for the stool pigeon patient merely for
alleviation of suffering due to addiction.
On the other hand, it is admitted to be permissible, even
under the Code, to prescribe morphine for an addict who suffers
also from some other type of painful and incurable pathology
— ^for example, cancer, late stage tuberculosis, or syphilis of the
central nervous system. The ideal stool pigeon, then, is one
who either has one of these maladies or is good enough actor to
fake the symptoms of one of them.
In either case, if the doctor prescribes for him, the frame-up
is complete. The unsuspecting physician is “hooked.”
For all that is now necessary is to get some complaisant
physician to make casual examination of the patient (who no
longer fakes symptoms, or whose actual symptoms are obscure),
and certify that he finds no evidence of the malady which the
prescribing physician named in his records of the case. The
patient himself will of course swear that he never had the
disease, and did not claim to have it.
Every act of the physician will be made to seem sinister.
If he called in a consultant to verify his diagnosis, that act
will be charged as evidence of criminal intent, and both physi-
cians will be indicted for Conspiracy. In almost stupefied
amazement, the physicians who never dreamed of violating any
law or regulation, will watch their own slow, inevitable en-
meshment in the coils of the Blackmail Code.
They may count themselves lucky if (as in a specific case I
have in mind) the prescribing physician escapes with a single
year of prison sentence (reduced from a nominal thirteen-year
145
A Word About Stool Pigeons
sentence), while the consultant (who had no connection what-
ever with the case beyond examining the patient in consulta-
tion) is given “probation,” with orders to abstain from prescrib-
ing any narcotic drug for a term of two years.
Some details of the methods by which such necromantic
efficiency is attained for the Blackmail Code are given in other
chapters. Here I will only note that to forbid a physician to
prescribe morphine is like forbidding a surgeon to use a knife,
a painter to use a brush, or a carpenter to use a saw; adding
that the interdiction is obviously illegal, since the Harrison Act
provides no such penalty.
However, that an illegal judgment should climax an illegal
trial based on an illegal indictment resulting from an illegal
entrapment of an innocent man, serves but to prove the beauti-
ful consistency of the Blackmail Code.
Incidentally, a judgment that forbade a physician to prescribe
narcotics obviously serves the interests of the dope peddler quite
as well as if the physician were actually imprisoned — and the
seeming clemency of the sentence perhaps forestalls publicity
that might arouse the community, and in particular the medical
profession, to full comprehension of the outrage that has been
practiced, in the name of the “Government” and under pre-
tended aegis of Federal law, against citizens innocent of any
wrongdoing in thought or deed.
Chapter XXII
a he Vhysician Scapegoat
B ut why is it necessary to arrest innocent physicians in
order to give the illicit drug racketeer Government pro-
tection?
Simply because the physician is, ex officio, the only person
who can legally administer (directly or by prescription) a single
dose of any narcotic drug to anybody. That elemental truth
is sometimes overlooked when the narcotics problem is under
discussion. But such is the law — ^not Federal law, but State
law. Federal law (the Harrison Act) merely provides that
only persons qualified by State laws to prescribe drugs are
eligible for Federal permits to prescribe narcotics. But for the
present purpose, this is a distinction without a difference.
Suffice it that there is no law permitting any one but a
physician (we may overlook dentists and veterinarians in the
present discussion) to prescribe or administer narcotic drugs.
Nor is there any Federal law that in any way limits or con-
trols the prescribing or administration of any narcotic drug by
a physician after he has obtained his permit.
The Harrison Special Tax Law no more limits or restricts the
physician in dispensing narcotic drugs to his patients than any
other tax law limits the sale of gasoline by a licensed filling
station to any fixed quantity or to any particular type of
customer, or of cigarettes by an authorized dealer.
If any registered physician wished to prescribe morphine, for
example, in any quantity needed, for any and every morphine
addict who came to him as a patient, there is absolutely nothing
in the Harrison Special Tax Law (commonly called the Nar-
146
The Physician As Scapegoat 147
cotic Law) to prevent him from doing so. No Federal law has
jurisdiction over the professional activities of the physician.
In the light of what has happened during the past twenty
years, it is difficult to grasp the simple truths just presented.
Very few physicians know that such is the law. And those tliat
do know it are not likely to act on their knowledge, because
they know also that the Law is ignored and flouted by the
Federal Government, as represented by the Narcotics Bureau,
U. S. Attorneys, and Federal Judges, in spite of the clear inter-
pretation given by the Supreme Court.
They know that a Code, issued by a prohibition agent, and
sustained by the Narcotics Bureau and the Department of
Justice, now does service for law, and this Code does restrict the
professional activities of the physician, though there is no legal
warrant for such restriction. And they know that the Federal
Courts (short of the Supreme Court) are likely to uphold the
code, in defiance of the Law. The wise physician does not care
to cross swords with the local United States Attorney and Fed-
eral District Judge (backed by Narcotics Commissioner and
Attorney General of the United States).
He may not greatly respect Government high officials that
flout the Law, but he is not foolish enough to imagine that he
can best them in a legal battle, merely because he happens to be
Right.
So he strives to obey the Code, and forget the rights that are
his under tlie discredited Law.
This means, practically, that the physician will not prescribe
narcotics for any patient who is an addict. If he holds abso-
lutely to that rule, he will have no trouble (unless some Govern-
ment agent has a personal grudge against him, in which case
he may be framed even then). The patient he refuses to treat
will go to the peddler (having no other resource) and the
billion-dollar dope industry is intact.
148 Drug Addicts Are Human Beings
Nor would it be difficult to follow this course, were it not for
one or two complicating circumstances. The physician has no
desire to prescribe for the addict. You may take that as almost
axiomatic. The average physician wishes he might never see
an addict. The average physician knows nothing about drug
addiction or its treatment. He knows that any addicts he has
ever seen (and he probably has seen very few) were disagree-
able patients, mostly with psychopathic twists. Dealing with
them gave him scant professional or personal satisfaction.
But the difficulty is this: It is a chief part of a physician’s
business to relieve distress; to quell pain; to make patients feel
more comfortable. The physician cannot often flatter himself
that he has actually saved a life. But he knows that he has
relieved suffering — quelled the agony of a victim of a kidney
stone, a gall stone, a lacerated wound, a fractured limb, a
griping colic, a stabbing cancer, the twinging girdle pain of a
tabetic — a thousand times.
And he knows that the one drug that has accomplished these
thousand miracles is morphine. There is no substitute.
Now there comes to him a patient whose every aspect — of
feature, posture, manner, pulse-beat, voice-quiver — tells of
tortured nerves. The patient’s underlying malady is syphilis
of the central nervous system. His gait shows that the disease
has involved the spinal cord. The frightful girdle pains that
the patient describes are characteristic symptoms of the malady.
There are half a dozen other symptoms, technical, but unde-
batable — the so-called “Romberg sign,” the pupillary reflex
that goes by the name “Argyll-Robertson,” exaggerated knee-
jerk, low blood pressure. The man is a wreck, at the verge of
collapse. He is deathly pale. Sweat pores from his skin. He
is all a tremor. His life seems threatened.
Can the doctor do nothing } Oh, yes, the Doctor knows just
what should be done. He knows that he has but to write a
149
The Physician As Scapegoat
few words on the prescription blank that lies at his elbow, and
the patient, tottering to the nearest drug store, will receive the
remedy that would restore him miraculously to a semblance of
normality and the actuality of physical and mental comfort.
But if the physician is wise, he will not write the prescription.
For a glance at the patient’s arm has shown him that this man
is a drug addict. There is only one drug that can give him re-
lief. That drug, of course, is morphine — ^the same drug that has
given relief to all the other sufferers. The law of the land
permits the physician to write the prescription, and rescue the
sufferer. The law of humanity seems to demand that he write
it.
But the law of self-preservation commands the physician to
leave the prescription unwritten. A few words scribbled on
that sheet of paper — legal words, ethical words, humane words
— might bring the physician face to face with Stern Retribution,
in the form of Arrest by a Federal Narcotics agent. Indictment
by a Federal grand jury, Prosecution by a United States At-
torney, a trial directed by a Federal Judge who acts as advocate
and a verdict of Guilty of Felony by a jury — followed by a
Sentence that might be “a two thousand dollar fine, and con-
finement in a Federal prison for a term of five years.”
Those are the sequels that the physician may see on the pre-
scription blank, as he reaches for it. Then it is a question of
compassion versus, shall we say fear or wisdom Desire to aid
a suflering patient versus desire to remain at liberty. Love of
humanity versus fear of a weasel-faced Government agent, a
stool pigeon, known to be lying in wait, eager to act in the
interests of his unofficial employers of the billion-dollar dope
industry.
If the physician is worldly-wise, he will not write the pre-
scription. He will let the blank lie there, and show the patient
to the door. If he is chicken-hearted about witnessing human
150
Drug Addicts Are Human Beings
suffering, as most physicians are, let him give the patient a ten
dollar bill — should he chance by exception to have one — and
tell him to seek the nearest “dope” peddler, to gain relief. And
never to return.
Do you begin to get the idea? If the physician had not
known that the Government agent was lurking in the back-
ground (perhaps not to appear for weeks, but still in the offing
and certain sooner or later to appear), he would have written
the prescription. The patient would have received at the drug
store, for thirty or forty cents, the drug for which he must pay
the peddler ten dollars.
But the druggist would have given no part of the thirty cents
to the Government agent. The illicit industry, which the
Government agent is bound to protect, would have lost the ten
dollars. The billion-dollar bank roll would have been short by
just that amount.
Well, ten dollars from a billion is not a big deficit. No; but
there are upward of 160,000 physicians in the country, and if
each one of them wrote a prescription today that robbed the
dope peddler of ten dollars, the dent in the day’s income would
be $1,600,000. That would be a significant dent; for you recall
that the daily profit — ^to make the aggregate yearly billion — ^is
only $3,000,000.
It follows that if each physician were to write two such
prescriptions, the total dope-peddler sales for the day would be
annulled. And if the physicians’ prescriptions had each called
for a week’s supply for the sufferers (as they might well have
done), the illicit drug industry that week would register a
blank — as against the $21,000,000 profit that had been counted
on.
To prevent that catastrophe, is the task of the Government
Narcotics agents. Were they to falter — ^were they to permit
the physicians to write the prescriptions, as they are legally en-
The Physician As Scapegoat 151
titled to do — the billion-dollar industry would collapse in. a
week. Within a month, the Narcotics smuggler and peddler
would vanish from the land. (Except, indeed, that protection
would still be given them in a few States that have enacted the
Narcotic Bureau’s “Uniform Law,” based on the Code — until
such time as this law can be repealed.)
Bulwarked against that catastrophe, however, is the stalwart
Narcotics Bureau, with its law-defying Code (supported in a
few misguided States by a “Uniform Law” based on the Code).
So long as that bulwark holds, the bilHon-dollar industry is se-
cure. And up to the present, it has proved an invincible barri-
cade. The most alarming threat it ever received was from the
Narcotics Clinic at Los Angeles, where organized Medicine un-
dertook to do for the ajfflicted addict what private medicine
dared not attempt.
But that effort, though backed by municipal and State forces
— the Mayor of the city, the Health Board, the local and State
Narcotics officials, the County Hospital as well as the County
Medical Association — ^and though monumentally successful
during the three years of its operation, fell before the organized
attack of the Federal coadjutors of the billion-dollar racket.
Which goes to show that a billion-dollar bankroll is a splen-
did adjuvant in any plan that involves the flouting of Law, or-
der, and humanitarianism.
If we remind you that the overthrow of the Clinic was ac-
complished only with the framing of three Clinic physicians,
with arrests and indictments some of which were kept on the
calendar for more than three years, are still pending (after ah
most three years) and one of which resulted in convictions of
innocent physicians, with a prison sentence, our thesis that the
physician plays the role of “goat” in the billion-dollar illicit
drug comedy will perhaps be regarded as sufficiently illustrated.
Chapter XXIII
Ignorance and Fanaticism
I T REMAINS to examine another curious aspect of the nar-
cotics situation. The facts and conditions being as pre-
sented — ^and there seems to be no way to escape conclusions so
obvious — ^how does it happen that many excellent people, who
are so situated that no one can suspect them of sharing in the
profits of the billion-dollar racket, nevertheless lend aid to the
racketeers, by opposing any change in the illegal Code that
brought the racketeer into being and has kept him secure in an
enterprise for him so lucrative and for the public so cosdy }
Ignorance and fanaticism, taken together, no doubt supply
the full answer.
Against fanaticism it is useless to inveigh. But it may be
worthwhile to attempt to enlighten the sane reader as to certain
things about which there appears to be almost universal mis-
understanding.
A clue may be furnished by consideration of the only objec-
tion which, so far as I am aware, has ever been offered by the
coadjutors of the “dope” peddler and smuggler in their attack
on the Narcotic Clinic. This is the allegation that some Clinic
patients may have received prescriptions for larger quantities
of morphine than they personally required to keep them “in
balance.”
Let it first be recalled that even the Code of the Narcotics
Bureau permits the administration of morphine to patients hav-
ing “painful and incurable pathology” other than drug addic-
tion. It is not denied, then, that the prescribing of morphine
152
Ignorance and Fanaticism
153
for the Clinic patients was legal and legitimate. Indeed, after
the chief Clinic physicians were arrested, the Federal Narcotics
ojB&cer in charge of the Pacific Division took the Clinic in hand,
and personally requested a physician of his acquaintance to
continue prescribing for these patients. But he, personally, sat
at the elbow of this physician, and sought to demonstrate that
most or all of them could get along with smaller dosage than
had been hitherto prescribed for them.
It may be noted in passing that the attempt did not succeed.
The patients could not be kept comfortable on the smaller dos-
age (based on a strange delusion that six grains is the maximum
requirement of any individual — in defiance of world-wide ex-
perience), and the physician resigned, and was then arrested
and brought to trial because he prescribed for three of the pa-
tients after he left the Clinic. That fantastic happening be-
longs in the picture, but the point of the moment is the question
whether patients actually did receive more morphine than they
needed, and were able to barter the excess.
Against the probability of this, it may be noted that all the
patients had been examined again and again by at least two hos-
pital physicians of wide experience, and that every effort was
made to keep the dosage at a minimum.
But the really material question is, not whether such a thing
did occur in some cases (a patient receiving, say, ten grains a
day, though requiring only eight, and bartering the remaining
two), but — What is the significance of such a happening?
Why should the beneficent work of the Clinic be condemned if
it were proved that it did not always operate with ideal effi-
ciency ?
The obvious answer, of course, is that the patient who, by
hypothesis, barters a few grains of morphine, is directly com-
peting with the dope peddler, and taking just so much money
away from the billion-dollar racket. The difference is that the
154
Drug Addicts Are Human Beings
patient has at best an insignificant quantity to sell, and that this
is morphine received at a drug store, which therefore has paid
its full excise tax, whereas the dope peddler’s supplies (un-
limited in quantity) have paid no tax whatever. The fact re-
mains, however, that the dope peddler is injured — ^just as he is
injured on a larger scale by every prescription written for a
Clinic patient.
But if you are not arguing from the standpoint of the dope
peddler, and have no desire to uphold his activities, what, then,
can be the objection to the Clinic, which rescued patients from
the peddler, and enabled them to secure the medicine they need
at a cost of four cents a grain, instead of the peddler’s dollar a
grain ? What harm has resulted if some of the patients receive
a surplus, and can undersell the peddler to the extent of a few
grains ?
I labor the point, because I am trying to dig into the minds
of certain very earnest philanthropists, who strenuously op-
pose every effort to rescue sick people from the clutches of the
dope peddler, even when the effort is made collectively, as at
the Los Angeles Clinic, and under such conditions that no
suggestion of possible private gain for any one (except the pa-
tients themselves) can be made or for a moment entertained.
The only rational answer I have ever heard is the simple and
logical one that the Clinic interferes with the dope traffic —
cuts into the billion-dollar racket. That argument is incon-
testible, and from the standpoint of the Federal authorities it
appears to be adequate. They have stopped every Clinic of
similar kind that has been operated anywhere in the United
States.
Beyond that, there remains only the domain of superstition.
If you believe that it is sinful to permit sick people to have med-
icine to relieve their suffering, then you may logically inveigh
against the humane efforts of the Clinic physicians. There was
155
Ignorance and Fanaticism
a time when pious people were horrified at the thought of as-
suaging the pangs of childbirth, on the ground that such agony
was God-given, and should be considered a blessing. But that
argument is out of date.
The argument against assuaging the suffering of the victims
of addiction disease is of the same category. Any one who ad-
vances such an argument is not quite sane. He belongs to the
class of what I have termed unwitting — or witless — coadjutors
of the dope peddler. He is a public menace — a far worse enemy
than the witting coadjutor, who opposes the Clinic because he
wishes to protect his share of the billion-dollar bank roll. This
hypocrite will presently be unmasked, for sooner or later the
public detects insincerity.
But the sincere, earnest fanatic, placed beyond the reach of
reason by his obsession, is a perennial menace to every humani-
tarian movement.
The man who argues that the drug addict’s frantic urge to
secure morphine does not represent an actual human need, will
remain to the end the foremost coadjutor of the illicit drug
racketeer.
Chapter XXIV
T^indergarten Exercise
A nd now a few concluding words as to another slightly
different aspect of the narcotics situation. There have
been those who imagined that the Harrison Law was directed
against physicians.
Nothing could be more absurdly fallacious.
The law was designed to keep the distribution of narcotics
within legitimate and legal bounds. And the only legitimate
or legal distributor of narcotics, to the ultimate consumer, is the
physician.
Who else should or could dispense the most important medi-
cines in the Pharmacopoeia ?
Who else knows anything about their physiological proper-
ties, their poisonous properties, their proper uses and dosage ?
But, you say, there are doctors who would abuse the privilege
if allowed to prescribe unchecked. Have it so. There are doc-
tors who would commit robberies, forgeries, murders, what
you will. But I think you will admit that the percentage of
such doctors is small. Statistics warrant that assertion. And
as to the prescribing of narcotic drugs, what is the point ? Prac-
tically all drugs that have efficacy in medicine are poisons if
given to the wrong person or in wrong dosage.
You may kill a diabetic with a small dose of insulin, if you
mistake his hypoglycaemia for hyperglycaemia. Any doctor
could give medicines to injure, or for that matter kill, any pa-
tient at any time if he chose to do so. Do you suggest that a
lay policeman should stand at the elbow of every doctor in his
oflEce, to guard against such an eventuality ?
iS6
157
A Kindergarten Exercise
Come, let us — not reason together — but merely act or talk
as if we had a glimmer of common sense. Does any one think
it better that politically appointed revenue officers — laymen,
without a suspicion of medical knowledge — should decide who
should receive medicine, and how and when and in what dos-
age? Is such a suggestion rational ? Does it make sense ?
Ask the child in the Kindergarten. Then explain to the child
that this is what is done in the United States, and has been done
for the past fifteen years. But go on and explain to the child —
and if the child is six years old it will understand— that the
reason this has been done, and is still done, is because certain
people in high authority make money by refusing to let sick
people be treated by doctors, and forcing them to go to peddlers
to get the medicine they need — “medicine that they have to
have,” you may explain to the child, “just as you have to have
bread to eat and milk to drink.”
And the child will open its eyes in wonder, and ask if you
think it is right that sick people should be so treated.
And your reply ? Well, I leave that to you.
And now, one last word about the doctor. Let us agree that
he is not to be trusted— though I hate to admit that he is not
about as trustworthy as the dope peddler or the Government
ofl&cer who upholds the peddler. But have it your own way.
The doctor is not to be trusted. Fortunately we do not need to
trust him. The Harrison Law — ^the law, this time; not the
Code — ^provides that every prescription for narcotics written by
the doctor shall be kept on file at the pharmacy where it is filled
(and a duplicate in the doctor’s office) for inspection by Gov-
ernment agents.
So we don’t need to trust the doctor. His every act is open
to inspection. Every grain of narcotics he prescribes will be
registered — witli the name and address of the recipient. What
chance, then, has the doctor to rival the dope peddler, however
158 Drug Addicts Are Human Beings
keen his desire, since his every transaction is a matter o£ record,
while every transaction of the dope peddler is surreptitious ?
At the worst, will the doctor be as sedulous to make drug ad-
dicts and keep them addicted as the dope peddler is today?
Think that one over. Take a look at your family physician, and
ask yourself if, after all, he is a more despicable creature than
the average dope peddler, as you hear him described.
Then ask yourself, further, whether it might not be safe to
take a sporting chance on giving a trial to the Harrison Law, of
1914, which has never been tested, by putting the question of the
medical treatment of a half-million sick people into the hands
o£ the medical profession — even though by so doing you should
(a) annul the Narcotics Code that the Supreme Court has pro-
nounced unconstitutional, (b) disrupt the Narcotics Bureau it-
self, (c) take away several million dollars of graft money from
numerous officials in high or low places, (d) vacate Federal
courts, (e) reduce the population of jails and prisons, and
(f) put the entire illicit drug industry, with its billion-dollar
turnover, out of business.
Think this over a little. Discuss it with Johnnie when he
comes from the Kindergarten class. And see if, jointly and
collectively, you can find the answer.
IPSO FACTO RACKETEERS
Anyone who would gain a clear comprehension of the character,
origin, and influence of the Narcotics “Dope” Ring, must know that it
has two groups of apparently very different members or proponents:
Group A: What may be called the obvious members of the Ring,
the dope smugglers and peddlers, who directly handle the contraband
goods and are the first recipients of the billion-dollar income;
Group B: What may be called the ipso facto members or proponents
of the Ring, whose support alone makes the existence of the illicit drug
traflEc possible, and without whose cooperation the obvious members of
the Ring would find themselves bereft of customers, to the abolition of
the billion-dollar bankroll.
A Kindergarten Exercise 159
There are three groups o£ these ipso jacto members of the fraternity:
(1) Federal Narcotics officers and agents; (2) United States Attorneys;
and (3) Federal District Judges.
Members of the first group have been supported by successive Secre-
taries of the Treasury; members of the second group by successive
Attorney Generals of the U. S.; members of the third group by various
members of the Appellate Division of the Federal Court.
As a matter of course, members of the “obvious” group of gangsters
are violators of Federal laws — the laws against smuggling and the Har-
rison Act, which forbids sale of narcotics except by registered persons
of specified callings. The members of the “ipso facto" Ring are not so
patendy but no less persistendy violators of the Federal law — the Har-
rison Act; not indeed, through direct trafficking (except to a minor
extent in supplying dope to stool pigeons), but through refusal to accept
the interpretation of the Harrison Act given by the Supreme Court of
the United States.
If members of any one of the three groups — Narcotics officers, U. S.
Attorneys, and Federal Judges — could be induced or forced to recognize
the decisions of the Supreme Court, and to act accordingly, the Dope
ring would be disbanded almost overnight — there would cease to be
an y illicit drug traffic, and the billion-dollar bankroll would be no more.
Properly interpreted, then, “the Narcotic drug problem” of which
even our Presidents prate on occasion, may be stated in these terms:
How can one or another of three groups of Federal officials be made
to obey the Federal law?
It is a problem for which no one as yet has found the answer.
Perhaps a few words of explanation should be added, to make the
terms of the problem clear. The essence of the matter is this:
The Harrison Law was designed essentially to place the distribution
of narcotic drugs in the hands of physicians. Similar laws in all Euro-
pean countries are enforced, with the result that drug addiction is
nowhere regarded as a problem of great significance, and nothing at all
comparable to our dope ring (with billion-dollar turnover) exists or is
dreamed of.
But in this country, the Harrison Law was at once superseded by
“Regulations,” put out by the Commissioner of Internal Revenue and
subsequently sponsored by Prohibition officers and Narcotics Bureau,
which reversed the meaning and import of the law, and, by denying
physicians the right or duty to treat drug addiction, brought into being
an obvious dope ring to cater to the imperious needs of the great group
of unfortunates who require regular use of narcotics in order to keep
them in anything like normal condition.
Had not the Prohibition and Narcotics officers had the support of
i6o Drug Addicts Are Human Beings
Secretaries of the Treasury, their illegal “Regulations,” or “Codes
would have been null and void — and the Harrison Law could have
operated to keep the distribution of narcotics in the hands of physicians;
and there would have been no dope smugglers and peddlers.
Secondly, had not United States Attorneys (supported by Attorney
Generals) accepted the Code, in place of the law, and proceeded to
cooperate with the Narcotics authorities by indicting and prosecuting
physicians who attempted to act under the Harrison Law, the schemes
of the Narcotics Bureau would have fallen flat, and again there would
have been no Dope Ring, no illicit drug traffic.
In the third place, had not Federal District Judges (often supported
by Circuit Judges) upheld the Narcotics Bureau and the United States
Attorneys in their acceptance of the illegal Code (as against the Harri-
son Law), the illegal prosecution of physicians would have failed (in-
stead of resulting in 95 per cent of convictions), and soon the other
members of the coalition would have seen the futility of further effort
to supplant the Harrison Law with an illegal Code. The sick people
would then have been restored to medical attention, as the Harrison Law
contemplates; and no customers would remain for the obvious members
of the Dope Ring. (For certainly no sick man would elect to pay one
dollar a grain for the medicine that would normally cost two or three
cents a grain at the pharmacy.)
I hope this makes clear what is meant by ipso facto members of
the Dope Ring. What is implied is that every member of any one
of the three groups in question who refuses to accept the clear decisions
of the Supreme Court (to the effect that Codes are not Laws, and that
the Harrison Law was never designed to control the practice of medi-
cine, and would be unconstitutional if it were so designed), and accepts
in place the illegal Code (which denies medical treatment to the un-
fortunate victim of addiction disease, thereby forcing him into the
clutches of the dope peddler) — that every such person becomes ipso facto
a coadjutor of the dope peddler whose interests he serves, and therefore
effectively a member of the Dope Ring.
It matters not at all whether any individual member of the Ipso
Facto Dope Ring receives a monetary emolument from the billion-dollar
bankroll, or whether his reward is of some less tangible kind. It mat-
ters not whether he may even act through ignorance or fanaticism
rather than through cupidity; — ^none the less is he effectively a member
of the gang.
And the Narcotics Problem, let it be repeated, is simply this: How
can the members of any one group of the Ipso Facto Dope Racketeers be
made to recognize the Harrison Law (^as interpreted by the Supreme
Court of the United States') as having greater authority than the uncon-
A Kindergarten Exercise i6i
stitutional Code that supports the Obvious Dope Raci^eteers arid gen-
erates the billion-dollar bankroll?
Whoso can solve that problem will earn the gratitude of his genera-
tion. The emancipation of the most pitiful victims of bureaucratic
racketeering this country has known will follow as a matter of course;
jails and prisons will be emptied; Court calendars will cease to overflow;
and what has been termed the American Inquisition will come to
an end.
But let no one suppose that the Ipso Facto Racketeers, flanked by the
Obvious Racketeers with their billion-dollar bankroll, offer an easy
conquest. As yet, after nearly twenty years, they still represent an al-
most unbroken phalanx.
BOOK IV
Ipso Facto ^acl^eteers in ^lylction
Chapter XXV
Official Interpretations
T he conventional charge, a thousand times repeated, in
cases of alleged violation of the Harrison Law is that the
physician who prescribed narcotics was not treating the patient
in the course of his professional practice. The foundation for
the charge is the allegation that the patient did not suffer from
any severe pathology other than addiction. If this claim can
be established, in the minds of the jurors, a verdict of guilty can
be relied upon.
The situation just outlined involves an absolute non sequitor.
The Harrison Act does indeed provide (by negative statement)
that the physician’s administration of narcotics shall be “in the
course of his professional practice only.” But it makes no sug-
gestion whatever as to what line of conduct implies “profes-
sional practice;” and nowhere does it make the slightest refer-
ence to narcotic addiction or to any other malady or condition.
The Narcotics Commissioner himself would not contend that
anything in the wording of the law could logically be inter-
preted as forbidding the physician to prescribe narcotics for
drug addicts — or as making any other restriction on the phy-
sician’s exercise of his own professional judgment.
How then explain the court procedure which makes claim
that a physician who prescribes for a patient who is not the vic-
tim of some “pathology” other than addiction has violated the
Harrison Law }
The explanation furnishes a very pretty illustration of the
niceties of juridical procedure. It appears that in the early days
165
i66
Drug Addicts Are Human Beings
of the Harrison Law, twenty years ago, questions arose as to
the interpretation of the phrase about “professional practice.
The Collector of Internal Revenue, in answering a letter, read
into the Law the meaning that physicians, though permitted to
prescribe in accordance with their own judgment, should be
called upon to explain the reason for any prescription that called
for unusual doses of narcotic medicines.
The only word that properly describes this “interpretation
is “silly.” The physician is the only person who is authorized to
prescribe narcotics at all. No one else is assumed to know any-
thing about the uses of medicines. No one else can legally ad-
minister a single dose. Yet the naive letter of the Collector as-
sumes that the law provides that the physician must explain to
a lay policeman just what is the basis of his professional judg-
ments. He must tell the narcotics agent just why he thinks
one patient requires larger doses than another of a medicine
(which incidentally chances to be the most important drug in
the pharmacopoeia) which physicians prescribe to the extent of
several tons every year, and of which no one else (including the
narcotics agent) can legally dispense a single grain.
And, to complete the joke, it was soon assumed by the nar-
cotics authorities that if the lay policeman was not satisfied with
the physician’s explanation of his professional practice, he could
hale the doctor to court, and have him tried for a felony.
Not unnaturally some physicians resented this, and even Ijad
the effrontery to challenge the authority of the narcotics agents.
In one such case (in the year 1919), an Appeal went to the Su-
preme Court, via the Appellate Division, with this question:
“If a practicing and registered physician issues an order for morphine
to an habitual user thereof, the order not being issued by him in the
course of professional treatment in the attempted cure of the habit, but
being issued for the purpose of providing the user with morphine suffi-
cient to keep him comfortable by maintaining his customary use, is such
order a physician’s prescription under exception (b) of section Id
Official Interpretations 167
The question was answered in the negative. Even at that,
there was a sharp division in the Court, Chief Justice White
and Justices McKenna, Van de Vanter and McReynolds dissent-
ing, and holding the Harrison Act itself unconstitutional. A
similar decision was given, a year later, in a case where it was
stated that a physician had procured “sale of morphine sul-
phate” . . . “by means of a prescription issued not to a patient
and not in the course of his professional practice, contrary to the
prohibition of section 2 of the Act.”
These are the decisions (dated 1918 and 1919, respectively)
on which the narcotics authorities have relied, throughout the
ensuing years, in claiming that a physician may not legally pre-
scribe narcotics for an addict who has no “other pathology.”
Even taken at face value, it is a shadowy claim. For please note
that the cases presented beg the question at the outset, in the
phrases that I have italicised, which expressly state that the ac-
cused physician did not prescribe for a patient in the course of
professional practice.
If, as stated, the physician did not act in professional capacity
(was not treating a patient), it would go without saying that he
violated the law which provides that no one but a physician
acting in professional capacity shall dispense or prescribe nar-
cotics.
Effectively, then, what the question amounted to was as co-
gent as this: “If a person has committed a murder, is he a mur-
derer?” Or, specifically, this: “If a person has clearly violated
the Harrison Narcotics Law is he guilty of violating the Harri-
son Narcotics Law?”
It is rather obvious, I take it, that the question really at issue
should be, not Is the man guilty if he violated the law; but did
he violate the law? The physician, sitting there in his office,
supposedly practicing his profession, issues a prescription to a
sick person who came to him for treatment. On what ground
i68
Drug Addicts Are Human Beings
do we decide that this person was not a patient, and that the
physician did not write the prescription in the course of his pro-
fessional practice?
Pretty obviously, that is the vital question. The Supreme
Court at the moment overlooked that point. They made
amends six years later (Linder case, 1925) by declaring that
drug addiction is a disease that the physician is entitled to treat;
and that, in any case. Federal Law has no jurisdiction over the
practice of a profession. But the earlier decision, trumpeted
abroad, continued to be used as foundation for the victimizing
of physicians ; the later decision being totally ignored.
The phrases of the equivocal question that the Supreme
Court had authenticated {but afterward in effect disavowed)
were incorporated into Federal Indictments in hundreds of
cases, year after year. Each stereotyped “count” of the Indict-
ment charges that a prescription of given date (the existence of
which is never in dispute) was issued “not in good faith and
not in the course of professional practice only ...” To em-
phasize the charge, it is further alleged that the person who re-
ceived the prescription had no disease calling for treatment with
narcotics, and that the narcotics were in fact not issued for the
treatment of any disease.
The fact that addiction itself has been recognized as a disease
in a Supreme Court ruling; and that the Government has es-
tablished a splendid hospital for the treatment of addiction of
course finds no mention in the Indictment, nor in the court
trial that follows. On the contrary, the Federal District
judge (with rare exceptions) will rule that addiction is not
a condition that the physician is entitled to treat; and that the
issuance of a prescription to an addict who had no other pathol-
ogy is a violation of the Harrison Act.
The explanation is that the average judge never dreams of
merely reading a statute and asking himself what it means.
Official Interpretations 169
He looks instead for some interpretation made by an Appellate
Court (having to do always with some individual case, the
particularities of which necessarily more or less confuse the
issues). He will verbally admit — indeed, he would earnestly
affirm — that the decisions of the Supreme Court are the ulti-
mate authority. But there is nothing to prevent him from
fixing on an ancient decision of that Court, and utterly ignoring
more recent decisions — as is constantly done in dealing with
narcotics cases.
And the District judge who thus flouts his superiors can do
so with entire equanimity; for he knows that there is not one
chance in a hundred that his misinterpretations of the Law
will ever be brought to the attention of the high Tribunal.
Upward of five thousand physicians whose only crime was
that they wrote prescriptions that no law forbids them to
write have been convicted as felons in Federal District courts
during the past twenty years; and the cases that have been able
to fight their way to the Supreme Court for rehearing are just
six in number. Only a shade better than one case in a thou-
sand!
Why, then, should a District judge hesitate to make his own
interpretation of the law Why should he hesitate to declare
that a physician may not legally treat addiction, of which the
law makes no mention.? Why should he hesitate to instruct
the jury that the illegal “Regulations” of the Narcotics Bureau
are Law?
The answer to each question is that he need not and does
not hesitate. Just why the average Federal judge thus flouts
the law, is a question that need not be opened at the moment.
The Voice of Authority?
The Supreme Court decision in the Linder case, just referred
to, was written for the unanimous Court by Mr. Justice
170
Drug Addicts Are Human Beings
McReynolds (who, as above noted, was one of four Justices
who had dissented from tlie equivocal earlier decisions). In
writing the Linder decision, the Justice went out of his way to
declare that:
“The Harrison Act makes no mention of addicts or their
medical treatment. They are diseased, and proper subjects for
such treatment.”
He went on to state that the Harrison Act is a pure revenue
measure, having no control over the practice of a profession; —
that being a matter reserved to the individual States. And he
naively added that if the law assumed such power, it “would
be invalid and could not be enforced.”
Shortly thereafter, in conversation with a friend of mine,
Justice McReynolds gave assurance that thenceforth the per-
secution of physicians in the name of the Harrison Act would
cease. Little did the guileless magistrate realize, apparently,
that the decisions of the august tribunal for which he had
acted as spokesman have only moral force at best, and may be
utterly ignored by any bureau or lower Court that has adequate
political bac\ing.
Little did he or his colleagues dream that for the ensuing
thirteen years, at least, the force of that Linder decision, in
its bearing on narcotics authorities and Federal District courts,
would be precisely nil. Little did they dream that the old
trick indictment, with its falsified charges, would continue in
force, absolutely unmodified, to the undoing of upward of
four physicians every week, year in and year out.
They could not have believed that their decision in the
Linder case would be scornfully repudiated in the very office of
the Attorney General of the United States ten years later; and
shrugged aside in countless Federal courts.
They would have deemed it incredible that the Bureau of
Narcotics, in the year 1937, would quote the antiquated de-
Official Interpretations 171
cision of 1919 (even citing the trick question that evoked it)
as final authority for the illegal activities of the Bureau —
utterly ignoring the Linder decision of 1925, the Boyd decision
of 1926, the Nigro decision of 1928; to say nothing of the
famous AAA decision of 1936, in which the Linder decision
was quoted and cited as basic law.
Yet these things came to pass. The falsified trick-indictment
is doing service in 1938 precisely as it did in 1919. And the
narcotics authorities would have us believe that in clinging to
their obsolete view of drug addiction as a readily curable
condition (holding to discredited interpretations of the law,
and thereby, consciously or unwittingly, but all-effectively
maintaining the billion-dollar drug racket) — they are acting
in good faith, and honestly endeavoring to benefit their fellow
men.
One can only say, in the light of the evidence, that if they
are sincere in this belief, they will rank in history with the
Torquemadas who in the name of Religion burned the heretics
and the Cotton Mathers who served God by hanging the
witches. But whether they are sincere — mere victims of nar-
cotophrenia, beyond reach of reason — is a question regarding
which there is opportunity for difference of opinion. The
Torquemadas and Cotton Mathers of yore lived in the shadow
of dark superstitions. But not within the penumbra of a
billion-dollar bankroll. Conceivably there might be signifi-
cance in that distinction.
CH.-VPTER XXVI
^ricJ{s of the Tirade
A STANDARD method of the Federal prosecutors, in try-
ing physicians for alleged violation of the Harrison Law,
is to arrest addict patients, either as conspirators with the
physician or as material witnesses, and keep them in jail,
where they are taken off the drug, and in due course presented
on the witness stand in proof of the contention that the physi-
cian might readily have cured them of the drug habit had he
cared to do so.
This is the method absolutely standardized in Federal courts.
Its tremendous effectiveness is attested by the record of more
than 95 per cent of convictions in these cases — the physician
being pronounced a felon because he gave medicine to a
patient who seemed vitally to need the medicine; whereas, in
fact (it will be claimed) the patients did not really need the
medicine at all, as their condition while in jail is alleged to
demonstrate.
There are, I trust, few readers of these lines who are so
guileless as to suppose that this standard procedure is an honest
move on the part of the Government prosecutors. These
gentlemen are in the business of securing convictions, and all
things are fair and ethical in court procedure, as in love and
war. The Federal attorney is perfectly aware that he must
keep the patient in jail until time for the trial (usually bringing
him there under guard), for the excellent reason that he would
no longer be available as a “cured” exhibit if he were at large.
He would have reverted to the use of the drug, as surely as a
duck released from a pen will go back to water.
172
173
Tricks of the Trade
The Federal attorneys know this, I say. Their task is merely
to keep the jury from learning the simple truth of the matter.
Mostly they succeed — thanks to the laws of evidence which no
one not a lawyer can ever comprehend. And, legal “ethics” be-
ing what they are, no one will blame the prosecution for
playing this winning card.
Such is the standard procedure, dear reader, in what is
euphemistically termed a Federal court of “Justice.”
Let me cite a single specific instance of the use of this
standardized trick in connection with the two successive trials
of a Clinic physician at Los Angeles. Three patients named
Mayers, Jensen and Avory (chronic cases suffering from other
pathology and certified by hospital physicians as incurable)
were indicted along with the physician who had prescribed
for them, and “cured” of addiction in jail, that they might be
introduced in the conventional manner at the trial of the
physician.
For a wonder, the trick barely failed to work — one skeptical
juror caused a mistrial. The “cured” addicts were discharged,
and of course reverted promptly to the use of the drug, as any
one could have predicted.
Some months elapsed before the case was scheduled for re-
trial. Then the addicts were again jailed, and once more
“cured” and thus made available for the usual demonstration.
But now the case was tried without jury. A judge, sitting
by himself, can disregard the usual hampering rules. He can
find out a few facts of the case before him. Things that could
never be brought to the knowledge of a jury are quickly
revealed. And so we find Judge Yankwich making this
succinct but significant summary, in the course of the decision
in which he acquitted the physician and applauded his action
in giving humane treatment to the patients who had obviously
needed treatment:
174
Drug Addicts Are Human Beings
“As to Mayers, Jensen, and Avory, the evidence shows that the drug
was withdrawn from them while they were in jail, by a physician who
had no previous experience along these lines. But they have since re-
turned to the habit, except as for such time as it was taken away from
them during (the second period of) incarceration.”
If I add that two of these patients had been used, during their
first period of incarceration, as “cured” exhibits to convict
another physician who had also treated them (successfully
used, before a jury, with a prison sentence for sequel), perhaps
the point under consideration is sufficiently demonstrated.
(Incidentally, both have stated that they were coached by a
U. S. Attorney to perjure themselves by swearing that they
suffered no inconvenience while being taken off the drug.)
Meantime it is officially recorded that scarcely one addict in a
thousand has been permanently cured by incarceration, even
for a term of years. At the famous narcotics hospital at
Spadra, where only supposedly curable cases are admitted, the
most optimistic appraisal can claim no more than 15 per cent
of cures. A Federal prison official, testifying in a recent
narcotics case at Seattle, stated that he had personally treated
more than a thousand addicts in Federal prisons, without a
single cure.
These are merely typical illustrations from universal experi-
ence.
Consider, then, that the addicts jailed and brought into
court against the physician are by hypothesis victims of in-
curable maladies other than addiction (and hence theoretically
eligible to receive adequate “balancing” doses of narcotics as
long as they live). Consider, secondly, that the physician is
not permitted even to attempt to cure them of addiction while
they are ambulatory; and that the physician has no jail or
sanitarium into which he could thrust the patients even were
he foolish enough to imagine them curable.
Tricks of the Trade 175
Need we further characterize the procedure of the Court of
“Justice”?
It may not be amiss, however, to add a few words about the
Jail-“cure” trick from the standpoint of the direct victims of
the maneuver. Let us examine the specific cases of two of the
patients above named as having been twice incarcerated and
“cured” for use in prosecuting physicians who treated them.
It chances that I have the histories of these two patients before
me. They are typical, and therefore the better worth present-
ing.
Both these men are respectable hard-working citizens of
much better than average intelligence. The proof of the latter
point is that they have been able for many years to obtain the
morphine they imperatively need, often being obliged to pay
the extortionate rates of the dope peddler, without ever re-
sorting to dishonest methods of securing the purchase money.
I think I am right in saying that neither had ever been accused
of committing any crime — except the “crime” of securing
medicine at a drug store on the prescription of a reputable
physician. (For that “crime,” both have been twice incar-
cerated, as we have seen. And both, I believe, were subse-
quently imprisoned for alleged violations of narcotics laws.)
One of these men was and is a restaurateur. The other was a
successful iceman until the narcotics ofl&cers put him in jail.
After his release, during the depression, he peddled coffee
from door to door — until he was sent to jail again. Both men
had suffered for many years from painful maladies, diagnosed
by many physicians, including those of the Los Angeles Nar-
cotics Clinic. Each man required about twelve grains of
morphine per day to keep him comfortable. Securing this,
both had every appearance of normal men, aside from the
slight physical handicap incident to chronic arthritis (disabling
an arm) in one case and locomotor ataxia in the other.
176 Drug Addicts Are Human Beings
Owing to the painful character of their physical infirmities,
both had been addicted to the use of morphine for many years
— upward of twenty in each case. Both had tried, as all other
addicts try, to rid themselves of the “habit,” and had reverted
(as all other similarly afflicted sufferers do) to the drug, after
varying intervals of days or weeks.
Such is the story of these typical addicts. I challenge any
person — even a narcotics fanatic — to cite one single scintilla of
a reason why these men should not be permitted to purchase
the modicum of morphine that to them is the equivalent of
food, at a drug store, for a normal price (say four cents a
grain; or perhaps only half that, if proper adjustment were
made), legally and legitimately without publicity or palaver;
precisely as both are permitted to secure other drugs that are
prescribed for their respective “other pathologies.”
There is no Federal law that forbids them to do so — unless
the Supreme Court is all wrong in its repeated decisions.
Only an illegal, unconstitutional Code, sponsored by mis-
guided Federal authorities, stands between these men and their
elemental right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
I suggest that any and every Federal authority of responsible
position who has a conscious share in the infliction of such
diabolical injustice as these sick men have suffered is either an
irresponsible fanatic, a psychopathic sadist, or a minion of the
Dope Ring. Nay, that understates the case: he is ipso facto a
member of the Dope Ring, even if he does not know it.
In any case, he is totally unfit or utterly unworthy to hold
any public office. Whatever his mental state or his moral
status, his official position and the misuse he makes of it give
him rank as a Public Enemy of the first water.
NARCOTICS AND CRIME
The absurd notion that a narcotic (sleep-producing) medicine could
stimulate its recipient to criminal activities is one of the pleasantries
177
Tric\s of the Trade
foisted on the public by fanatic and Pharisee propagandists. The sole
support for this anomalous contention is the fact that the victim of
addiction disease has such imperious need of opiates to keep him normal,
sane, or even alive, that he will, if necessity arises, adopt almost any
expedient, legal or otherwise, to meet the need. Somewhat as you or I,
if denied access to water or food, would ultimately forget ethical con-
siderations to keep from dying of hunger or thirst.
Fanatics who, for whatever reason, wish to make sure that the addict
receives no medicine legitimately (insuring the market for the dope
peddler), make stock in trade of the claim that the addict is the “major
criminal” of the country. Government, State, and municipal statistics
utterly refute the claim. A Government report (previously cited) shows
2,317 arrests on narcotic charges among 2,274,489 arrests on charges
ranging from murder, rape, and robbery to drunken driving.
A recent investigation by Mr. Everett G. Hoffman of the police rec-
ords of former patients of the Los Angeles Narcotics Clinic tells in a
nutshell a typical story. Prior to admission to the Clinic, 65 addicts had
been arrested 311 times, for minor delinquencies incident to the secur-
ing of the medicine to which legal access was denied them.
During treatment at the Clinic, for periods ranging from a few
months to four years, the same addicts, now enabled to secure the
medicine legitimately and at minimum cost, were self-supporting, law-
abiding citizens, NO ONE OF THEM BEING ARRESTED.
After the Clinic was closed (by Federal authorities, in opposition
to the wishes of all local sponsors), eight of the patients died from
deprivation, and the others were forced back into the clutches of the
dope peddler, and again became law-breakers perforce. In the three
succeeding years, 16 of the sur\dvors still managed to keep clear of the
law. The remaining 41 were arrested 63 times; making a total of 374
arrests for this group of addicts (with 337 jail sentences), very few
indeed of whom would ever have violated any law had they been per-
mitted to receive a few cents’ worth of medicine from day to day at
normal cost — instead of being obliged to go to the peddler and pay a
hundred times the normal value.
Would it not be good BUSINESS (putting all humanitarian questions
aside) TO PERMIT THESE UNFORTUNATES TO SECURE
LEGITIMATELY THE MEDICINE WITHOUT WHICH THEY
CANNOT MAINTAIN INTEGRITY OF MIND OR BODY.? To
effect that end, nothing would be necessary but to abrogate the illegal
Code of the fanatics, and permit the LAW to function.
But this would involve the dissolution of the billion dollar drug
racket; wherefore it is a culmination not to be attained without a
desperate struggle. In 1936 there were 2,063 physicians and druggists
178 Drug Addicts Are Human Beings
reported for alleged violation of the Blackmail Code (with 480 cases
“compromised” on payment of $34,087.05 tribute; and 155 convicted in
courts, with aggregate prison sentence of 297 years and total fines of
$34,745.87), quite as if the N R A decision pronouncing such Codes
Unconstitutional had never issued from the Supreme Court; and in
further defiance of the AAA decision, which reiterated the truism
that the Federal Government has no Constitutional power to regulate
the practice of a profession.
Chapter XXVII
(J\Aanhandling the Law
T he attentive reader may recall that the really salient
feature of the Harrison Law, (as quoted in detail in an
earlier chapter) is the provision, in Section 2, that all transfers
of narcotic drugs shall be made on written order, issued by the
Collector of Internal Revenue, and signed by the registered
purchaser, who is conventionally a manufacturer, wholesaler,
or a retail druggist; it being specifically provided, as an ex-
ception to the section, that the use of such order forms is not
required of a physician in the dispensing or distribution of
any of these drugs “to a patient in the course of his professional
practice only*'
Coupled with that negative statement is the requirement
that the physician shall keep a record of all prescriptions or
distributions, except in case of patients upon whom he per-
sonally attends, for a period of two years, subject to inspection.
That is all. There is no other direct reference to physicians
in the entire Harrison Act; and the two indirect references
merely are complementary provisions, to the effect that drug-
gists may accept the prescriptions of physicians in lieu of the
official order forms of the Revenue Bureau.
As to the uses of narcotic drugs, the Harrison Law makes
no hint or suggestion. Nor is there mention of narcotic
addiction or any other malady or condition. You might read
the law from beginning to end without gaining the slightest
clue to the uses of narcotic drugs, beyond the implication that
they must be medicines that physicians prescribe. Many a
179
i8o Drug Addicts Are Human Beings
lawyer has prated about the law, many a judge has exposited
it, and many a juror has passed judgment on the handling of
narcotics by physicians, without realizing that the narcotics in
question include the most indispensable medicines in the
physician’s equipment — without which, medicine would be,
in Ostler’s phrase, a most unhappy calling.
The above brief but comprehensive analysis of the Harrison
Act must be borne in mind, if you would realize the grotesque-
ness of the “interpretations” of the law that are to come to our
attention as we proceed. Remember that the Law puts abso-
lutely no restriction on a physician in administering narcotics
to his patients in the course of his professional practice. His
right to administer these or any other drugs comes from the
State, not from the Federal Government; and Federal Law
can no more restrict his use of narcotics in the practice of his
profession than it can restrict the use of any other medicine.
As to the question whether a drug addict is a legitimate
patient, should that question arise (as it soon did), there is no
remotest reference in the law, nor could there be, without
making the law itself unconstitutional. As to the latter point,
we have the assurance of the Supreme Court. As to the former,
we need but to read the law itself. After all, the words of the
law are English; they are curiously simple and direct; there
are no legal phrases or obscurations; no legal acumen is re-
quired to understand the one simple phrase which states
merely that a physician need not use the order-forms of the
Revenue Bureau in distributing narcotics to his patients in the
course of his professional practice.
Please note that the phrase is negative. The law does not
even presume to authorize the physician to use his own pre-
scription blanks — because the makers of the law understood
that Federal law can have no jurisdiction over this matter.
Let it be repeated that only a State law can authorize any one
Manhandling the haw i8i
to practice medicine, or prescribe for patients, or do anything
“in the course of professional practice.” This the Supreme
Court has most emphatically declared (Linder case; AAA
decision). It follows that if we were to read into the phrase
just cited from the Harrison Act the meaning that supervision
is intended as to whom the physician may accept as a “patient,”
or what may be the character of “professional practice” — the
law itself would be condemned as unconstitutional.
Let us not dwell on that point at the moment, however. Let
us revert to the wording of the Harrison law, as cited, and re-
emphasize the fact that the words are simple English, which
any grammar-school pupil should clearly understand. Let us
once more recall that there are no words in the statute that
mention or suggest drug addicts or drug addiction. No word
or phrase can be pointed out which the wildest flight of
imagination could interpret as referring to or suggesting the
existence of a person who is accustomed to the habitual use of
narcotics or who has a “craving” or “appetite” for these drugs.
Does this reiteration of the statement that the Harrison Act
makes no mention of addiction seem tiresome and needless?
Tiresome it may be; but not needless. I must make sure that
every reader clearly understands, and will remember, the point,
in order that the amazing character of what is to be next
related may be comprehended. Not otherwise could you get
the import of the cases about to be cited — typical cases of
manhandling of the law by Federal officials whose supposed
function is the upholding of law.
The Federal Reporter records the finding of the Circuit
Court of the 10th circuit, of August 23, 1934, in the appeal of
Dr. Strader, of Oklahoma City, who had been convicted of
violation of the Harrison Narcotic Act, from sentence pro-
nounced by District Judge Edgar S. Vaught. In the reversing
decision, the Circuit Court cites Judge Vaught’s instructions to
i 82
Drug Addicts Are Human Beings
the jury — ^instructions which the jury is bound to accept as
the basic law governing their verdict. We are told that the
judge, after refusing to let a physician answer a question about
drug addiction (supposedly a medical topic), “observed that
the statute (Harrison Act) prescribes the diseases for which
morphine may be prescribed, that it expressly provides that
merely being an addict is not a disease, and that the question
was not one for medical testimony.”
Again, we are told, a physician was allowed to answer a
question as to whether he thought that pain would justify the
use of morphine, but the judge interpolated the statement
“that the jury would be instructed that the administration of
morphine under such circumstances is prohibited by law; that
the statute provides that it may not be given merely for re-
lieving pain incident to the condition of addiction.”
Here we listen to a Federal District Judge, telling us that
'‘the statute {a) prescribes the diseases for which morphine
may he prescribed f (J?) expressly denies that (^diction is a
disease', and {c) forbids giving morphine to relieve pain due to
addiction.
“The statute prescribes”! A Federal judge makes the state-
ments. But you, a mere onlooker, know that the statements
are simply false — ^utterly mistaken, if we take the charitable
view. The Appellate Court, speaking with judicial calm,
said:
“We think the Court incorrectly stated the law.”
They went on to say that the Court had also gone “an
arrow-flight” beyond the proprieties in certain other of its
instructions to the jury; notably in arguing that the stool
pigeon whom the physician had treated could have no motive
for testifying falsely (as to his condition when he went for
treatment), whereas the physician, being on trial, might have
great incentive to commit perjury.
Manhandling the Law
183
After making tliese comments, the Appellate Court of course
reversed the verdict, and sent the case back for re-trial. But
even if the physician were vindicated in the end, it would be a
travesty of language to say that all’s well that ends well. The
stigma of trial and conviction can never be erased. The mental
strain can never be compensated. Nor is it quite without
significance that the money spent can never be recovered.
And then, considering the case in larger relations, how small
was the chance that the gruesome error of the trial court would
ever be rectified. Of the scores (about 200 on the average) of
precisely similar cases tried each year, only a negligible number
ever reach the Appellate Court on appeal. Very few doctors
thus victimized can afford the expense of further lawyers’
fees, the printing of Transcript records that may run to hun-
dreds of pages, and the loss of time involved in what is at
best a doubtful venture. (Doubtful, because unless the trial
judge has committed some such gross improprieties as those
just listed, there is scant chance that the case will be reversed.
The Strader case is one case among many in that regard — one
among hundreds if you count all the cases in which physicians
have been convicted on precisely the same grounds, but which
have never been permitted to reach the upper court.)
Let me cite a more typical case — that of Dr. Thomas S.
Manning, of St. Louis; detailed in the Federal Reporter for
March, 1929 (Vol. 31, New Series, page 913). Here again we
have a physician prescribing in what would normally be con-
sidered the course of his professional practice, for patients
having, among other things, drug addiction disease. The
indictment named no fewer than eighty counts (each count
representing a prescription), and conviction was had on 29
counts. The judge divided the counts into two groups (for no
explained reason), and pronounced sentence of 5 years each on
8 counts, to run concurrently, and five years each on 21 other
184 Drug Addicts Are Human Beings
counts, to run concurrently, but consecutively as to the first
period. Thus the sentence was for 145 years of imprisonment,
reduced to 10 effective years.
Appeal was made from this sentence on the ground that the
indictments (which were identical in substance) did not charge
an offense against the United States, since there is nothing in
the Harrison Act forbidding the physician to treat a patient;
and that every factual charge of the indictment might be
admitted (as, indeed, all facts were admitted), without imply-
ing any crime.
The indictment in question was the stereotyped document
based in the main on the “Regulations” of the Narcotics
authorities, with which we are famihar. The essence of the
charge was that the person treated was not a legitimate patient,
being a person who was not in need of treatment for any
disease, and that he was not, in fact treated for any diseased
condition.
The appellant argued that, aside from the matter of fact
(it having been declared by the Supreme Court that the
Harrison Act makes no mention of addiction, but that the
addict is in reality a diseased person and proper subject for
medical treatment), the Federal Government has no juris-
diction over the practice of a profession (also in Linder case,
1925), and that therefore the allegations do not come within
the cognizance of Federal law. Ergo, no crime is charged in
the indictment.
The Appellate Court did not, of course, dispute the force of
the Supreme Court decisions. But they fell back on the obser-
vation that the specific charge is made in the indictment that
the physician did not prescribe “in the course of his professional
practice only.” Here the actual words of the statute are used;
and so, it was reasoned, a violation of the statute was charged.
Whether or not the charge was true, was a matter on which
Manhandling the haw 185
the Appellate Court was not asked to adjudicate; the function
of that Court being to deal with questions of law, and the
interpretations of law made in the lower court.
On this technical ground, the judgment of the lower court
was affirmed, and the case was ended — ^for there was not one
chance in a hundred that the Supreme Court would consider
an appeal on writ of certiorari.
This case, I repeat, was typical. By and large, these narcotics
cases are ended when the verdict of the petit jury has been
accepted by the District judge, and judgment passed. Yet the
trial may have been conducted from start to finish with entire
disregard of the Harrison Law (which is alleged to have been
violated) ; full dependence being placed on the illegal “Regula-
tions,” which read into the law things that not only are not
there, but could not constitutionally be there, as we have else-
where seen.
In conducting the case, the District judge may not only
ignore the rulings of the Supreme Court about the inapplica-
bility of the law to the regulation of the practice of medicine,
but he may openly and wilfully misquote decisions of the
Appellate Court (by which he is supposed to be bound) to
influence the jury against the defendant.
Again let me cite an illustrative case. On August 6 , 1925,
the eighth Circuit Court rendered a decision in the case of
Eckhart vs. the United States (Federal Reporter, 7, New
Series, p. 257) ; the case being that of a druggist who had been
convicted of filling prescriptions written by a registered physi-
cian. The point of the charge was that many prescriptions
had been filled, and that the druggist did not investigate as to
whether the recipients were drug addicts.
The Appellate Court, in reversing the verdict, ruled that the
Harrison Act puts no such obligation on the druggist as that
implied (making no reference to addicts). But from our
i86 Drug Addicts Are Human Beings
present standpoint, the most interesting part o£ the decision was
this statement:
The Court: The law leaves entirely with the physician the responsi-
bility as to when, under what conditions, and for what purposes he will
issue a prescription for the drug [morphine].
Note, now, the use made of this ruling by a District judge
in his instructions to the jury (in the Dr. Cary case, November,
1934, Los Angeles):
Judge Hollzer: The Harrison Anti-Narcotic Act does not leave en-
tirely with the physician the responsibility as to when, under what con-
ditions, and for what purposes he will issue a prescription for narcotic
drugs [morphine],
I have underscored the words which connote the departure
from the original. It will be seen that they exactly reverse the
authoritative decision. And this was no slip of the pen; for
the negation is followed up with these words;
Judge Hollzer (continuing) : The Act places restrictions on his right
to prescribe such drugs. The right of a physician to prescribe narcotics
does not include a right to prescribe large quantities of them regularly
and continuously to an addict not under restraint, simply for the pur-
pose of keeping him comfortable by maintaining his customary use of
narcotics.
Comment: You, dear reader, have been shown, above,
every word of the Harrison Act that refers to physicians, and
have been assured that there is no word in the Act that so
much as mentions addicts, let alone expressing any mandate
as to their treatment, whether under restraint or at liberty.
What, then, is your reaction to such statements as those just
quoted? Would they not seem strange if they had been
uttered offhand in casual conversation? What shall we say
of them, when we reflect that they were uttered from the
Manhandling the Law 187
Federal bench — ^read from written manuscript — and were ad-
dressed to a jury that held the professional life in its keeping ?
To complete this particular story, it may be related that the
same judge, after the jury had acquiesced and found the
physician guilty, and a year’s prison sentence had been im-
posed, violated a rule of the Supreme Court by permitting
delay in the filing of the Bill of Exceptions on which Appeal
was founded; with the result that the Appellate Court, after
listening to the argument for reversal, and — it is believed —
reaching a decision favorable to the physician, was obliged to
heed the demurrer of the “Government,” and regard the appeal
as never officially having been received.
So the innocent physician had to go to prison because a
Federal judge (in cooperation with a United States Attorney)
ignored a ruling of the Supreme Court.
Of this culminating act, you may make your own appraisal.
EXPERT TESTIMONY AT A DISCOUNT
In a celebrated trial in a Federal court at Los Angeles (the effect of
which was to close the Narcotics Clinic), seventeen physicians, first and
last, took the witness stand.
The sole question at issue was, whether the physician had treated
a certain patient in “good faith.’*
Unfortunately the defense counsel did not ask the Court to define
good faith. If they had, there would have been nothing more to say —
for no one could claim that the physician had attempted to injure
the patient, when he gave him the only treatment that could maintain
his sanity, or even his life. (The Government attorney admitted that
the patient could not do without the drug for a day without becoming
“a maniac.” And in fact the patient died a few months later in a
hospital because the physicians there dared not give him the same drug,
which alone could have saved him.)
And since the question was not raised (nor the point made that
the court had no jurisdiction when manner of practicing a profession
was the sole issue), the Government was permitted to challenge the
diagnosis, introduce medical testimony as to the dosage of morphine,
the symptomatology of disease, the curability of addiction, the justifi-
i88
Drug Addicts Are Human Beings
ability of treating ambulatory addicts, and allied irrelevancies. And
the defense counsel, following the trails of these red herrings, put on
the witness stand one physician after another, to elucidate every medtcal
aspect of the subject — instead of saying a few cogent words about its
legal aspects.
The physicians were men of distinction. Their testimony was unani-
mous — the treatment given by the accused physician was proper, ethical,
and in full accord with good medical usage. There was no testimony,
even by prosecution witnesses, to the contrary.
And that, you might suppose, would settle the matter. Listen, then,
to the presiding judge, in his instructions to the jury:
The Court: “Physicians have been permitted to testify as to the well
recognized methods among the medical fraternity of treating the persons
addicted to the use of narcotic drugs. You are instructed that it is
competent for medical men to give in evidence their expert medical
opinion touching matters within the range of the medical science with
which they are familiar; but such expert medical opinion and evidence
is not binding upon the jury, and is received as advisory only. The jury
is therefore permitted to regard such evidence as advisory only, and
reckon with it in the light and experience in human affairs, and to
accept it or reject it in whole or in part as you may conclude the evidence
warrants.”
Comment: Please recall, in reading that extraordinary statement,
that the matters in question were purely medical; matters concerning
which a layman’s “experience in human affairs” could have no conceiv-
able bearing. Judge then for yourself, in the light of your own experi-
ence in human affairs, as to what may have been the animus back of
the weird pronouncement.
Chapter XXVIII
The Tower of a Fixed Idea
T he first medical witness had not been long on the stand
in the Dr. Cary case before it was apparent that the Court
entertained a peculiar idea about certain features of medical
practice, or the duties of physicians. As the trial progressed,
it was evident that this conception had attained the proportions
of what the alienists term a “fixed idea.”
It was an idea that dominated the Court; influenced decisions
as to questions to be allowed or disallowed; motivated the
questions propounded by the Court directly to witness after
witness; and finally determined the complexion of the de-
finitive charge that went to the jury, and effectively resulted in
the conviction of two physicians who had infringed neither
spirit nor letter of any law.
The idea was that there is something sacrosanct about the
dosage of morphine; with the correlative ideas back of it that
the physician who deals with a case complicated by the need of
morphine must be perpetually on the alert to detect any
symptom suggesting that the dose might be lessened; such
obligation binding not merely the physician who prescribes
for the patient, but also the consultant who examined him, for
diagnostic purposes, before treatment began.
Now this conception, in the medical view, is simply naive,
to state the matter in the most polite manner. The addict most
directly concerned, and all the patients introduced as “similar
cases” during the trial (that is to say, all the cases in any way
under consideration during the trial) were addicts of many
years’ standing. No one of them was an addict of less than
ipo Drug Addicts Are Human Beings
ten or twelve years’ habitual usage of morphine; others ranged
from twenty to forty years of habitual usage. Every case had
been competently diagnosed as having incurable pathology
other than addiction — syphilis of the central nervous system;
late stage tuberculosis ; long-standing and most painful arthritis
— ^with sundry complications.
Efforts were made in every case to keep the patient on the
smallest dosage of morphine that would keep his or her system
“in balance.” Short of that, no treatment for the other pa-
thology could have any eflScacy. To attempt to reduce the
dosage below this point would mean (a) utter failure of all
treatment; (b) distress for the patient, instead of benefit; and
(c) the possible implication that an attempt was being made
to cure an ambulatory patient of drug addiction, which would
not only be puerile and fatuous, but illegal under the State
law, and in contradiction of the Code of the Federal Narcotics
Bureau.
No patient received a prescription for narcotics except by
coming in person to the prescriber’s office, for examination
and special treatment. Every patient was thus examined at
intervals of a few days (usually twice a week) ; the only longer
interval being the twelve-day period permitting Clark, in
response to his plea of necessity, to enable him to keep his job
(as elsewhere related). This exception, having been carefully
engineered as a part of the Government’s scheme of entrap-
ment, could not well be advanced (even if the argument were
otherwise valid) by any candid critic as proof that the physi-
cian did not examine his patients with adequate frequency.
Yet here was a layman with a fixed idea which, like fixed
ideas in general, seemed beyond the reach of evidence or
argument. The absolute necessity that Clark should receive at
least ten grains of morphine a day was admitted by the prosecu-
tion. The incurable nature of his addiction was sufficiently
The Power of a Fixed Idea 191
attested by the fact that he continued an addict though a
Government employe in the narcotics service. The suggestion
that any examination of him was necessary to determine any-
thing having to do with his use of morphine, would have
been regarded as absurd, not to say infantile. Yet the fixed
idea would not down.
One physician after another explained on the witness stand
that pathological addicts of this character can not be taken off
the drug while at large, if at all; nor permanently cured of
drug addiction disease, even if temporarily deprived by con-
finement. The “similar cases” were kept in jail, and brought
to court under surveillance, not because they had committed
any crime, but because it was recognized that they could not
be trusted at large, but must be expected to return to the drug
at the earliest opportunity. Yet this testimony and these object
lessons seemed unavailing to make a dent in the fixed idea.
The evidence told of careful clinical examinations, checked
in many cases by X-ray and laboratory tests. The physician
who treated the cases patiently explained the methods of
examination, and detailed some of the symptoms that jump to
the eye of the trained diagnostician. The nature of response to
treatment was described; symptoms that determined the char-
acter of further treatment were explicated; it was made clear
that these patients were under careful and perpetually recurrent
observation and examination. Yet to the victim of the fixed
idea they remained as patients who had not been re-examined
at all, but who most certainly should be examined, in the hope
of finding it possible to reduce their dosage of morphine, and
perhaps of being able to send them to institutions where they
could be cured of drug addiction.
Physicians attempted to explain that no such institutions are
available, except for a limited number of patients of affluence —
whereas these patients were persons only one degree removed
192 Drug Addicts Are Human Beings
from indigence. But nothing availed to change the tenor of
the questions with which the Court continued to bombard the
physicians, in what seemed a painful endeavor to gain compre-
hension of a medical situation that the fixed idea apparently
denied entrance to his brain. Let me illustrate, from the oflBcial
records.
“The Court: ‘Now, then, . . . what is the customary prac-
tice with reference to further examination to determine the
extent to which the administration of the drug is so re-
quired ?’ ”
“The Court: ‘Now, on the average, how frequently would
these examinations be given.?’ ”
“The Court: ‘Now, what about the case of suspected
tuberculosis? What sort of examinations or tests are made,
assuming always you have a drug addict ?’ ”
“The Court: ‘In that type of addict, following the primary
examination, is it customary to make additional examina-
tions?”’
“The Court: ‘Observations repeated on the average of
about how long?’ ”
“The Court: ‘Now, then. Doctor, by your last answer do
you mean that it is customary for physicians in such cases to
keep such frequent examination of the patient to ascertain as
to what extent he can gradually reduce the quantity of the
drug?’ ”
“The Court: ‘Now, Doctor, that determination, namely to
the extent to which a reduction is made in the quantity of the
drug, is determined by what you call these fairly frequent
examinations of the patient?”’
“The Court: ‘By your last answer do you mean that it
would be customary for the doctor to make examinations and
tests to determine what such actions were likely to be ?’ ”
“The Court: ‘Now, then. Doctor, by your answer do you
The Power of a Fixed Idea
193
mean that these examinations to which you have previously
referred as being customary every three days or so should be
eliminated ?’ ”
“The Court: ‘Does that include more than one examina-
tion of the patient?’ ”
“The Court: ‘Now, you spoke some time ago about these
examinations. Do the recurrent examinations play any part in
the case of a drug addict whose first examination appears to
indicate clinical syphilis of the central nervous system?’”
The eleven foregoing reiterations occur in the examination
of a single physician, who, according to explicit statement of
the prosecution, was not called to give expert testimony. And,
as here presented, they are quoted sequentially from the jury-
charge, in which the Court read them (together with the
answers). The idea thus hammered home was the last thing
in the minds of the jury as they went into deliberation.
Meantime the testimony of several physicians of equal stand-
ing, all concurring in the express declaration that the conduct
of the defendant had been in all respects ethical and in ac-
cordance with the best medical practice, was utterly ignored.
And the intent and purport of the testimony of the one physi-
cian singled out for exploitation before the jury, was obscured
and made to appear condemnatory — ^in contravention of his
intention and purpose.
That aspect of the matter has, however, been presented in
another connection. For the moment, I wish merely to illus-
trate the power of a fixed idea, based on misconception of
medical affairs lying beyond the scope of a layman’s clear
comprehension, to dominate a legal procedure, distort evidence,
transform a judge into an advocate, and in large measure
determine a jury decision which the advocate himself spontane-
ously pronounced (in an unguarded instant of surprise) a
verdict of very doubtful legality.
194
Drug Addicts Are Human Beings
MISQUOTING THE HIGHER COURT
Federal District judges, when acting in their usual capacity o£ txial
judges, seldom if ever profess to interpret the essentials of a statute on
their own responsibility. The ofiBicial interpretation is made by the
Supreme Court, or by the Circuit Court, which is, in effect, an appanage
of the highest tribunal. In theory, a decision handed down ftoni ®
Circuit Court is binding on all District courts, as the only valid in-
terpretation of the law. (If Appellate courts conflict, the Supreme Court
of course decides.)
Such is the theory. But in practice. District judges may on occasion
take upon themselves the responsibility of overlooking, or for that
ter negativing, a decision that runs counter to the view that the judge
wishes to implant in the mind of the jury. An illustration previously
presented will bear re-presentation.
Circuit Court, Eighth Circuit, in Eckhart case, August 6, 1925:
“The law leaves entirely with the physician the responsibility as to
when, under what conditions, and for what purposes he will issue a
prescription for the drug [morphine sulphate].”
District Court, Ninth District, in the Cary case, November 13, 1934;
“The Harrison Anti-Narcotic Act does not leave entirely to the physi-
cian the responsibility as to when, under what conditions, and for what
purposes he will issue a prescription for narcotic drugs [morphine sul-
phate].”
Just what would be your appraisal of the ethics of a misquotation
like that — ^with the liberty and professional life of an innocent physician
at stake.?
And, incidentally, on whom (in the opinion of the court) does the
responsibility rest, since no one other than a physician can legally write
a prescription at all, or otherwise dispense a single dose of any narcotic
drug?
Chapter XXIX
Hobson s Qhoice
W HEN a physician is on trial in a Federal court for al-
leged violation of the Harrison Act, the presence of a
jury is often a mere matter of form. Though nominally
responsible for the verdict, the jury in fact serves only as a cat’s
pa^v for the “Government” officials — the United States At-
torney and Federal District Judge. One proof of this is shown
in the record of more than 95 per cent of convictions in these
cases — 2 l result quite out of step with records of jury trials of
any and all other types of defendants.
This seems surprising, but is readily explicable. The expla-
nation derives from the fact that the function of the jury in
these cases is utterly different from that of juries in all other
types of criminal cases. Elsewhere, the jury is supposed to
determine a question of jact:—D\A the defendant commit the
act charged in the indictment.? For example, a murder has
been committed; — you cannot even find an indictment unless
the corpus delicti is in evidence. Did this defendant commit
that murder .? Or a robbery has been done. Did this defendant
commit the robbery.? And so on down the scale — always with
some definite infraction of law charged in the indictment;
with no open question, in the vast majority of cases, except the
identity of the delinquent.
But with the alleged violation of the Harrison Act by a
physician, the case is entirely different. The open question is
not a question of jact, but of theory of the law. There is no
dispute whatever as to what the physician did. He wrote the
195
ig6 Drug Addicts Are Human Beings
prescriptions, which are in evidence; — ^wrote them, dated them,
signed them, and kept duplicate copies in his office for inspec-
tion. He delivered the originals to the persons for whom they
were written, with the full expectation that they would be
taken to a drug store, filled, and kept on file for inspection.
Everything being thus done in the open, the only debatable
question would seem to be, whether the physician was legally
entitled to write the prescriptions. He must have thought he
was entitled to do so (unless he is an out and out imbecile).
But now the indictment alleges that he had no such right; but,
on the contrary, committed a felony each time he wrote a
prescription.
And nominally the jury is asked to decide whether the act
of writing each prescription was in fact a felonious act.
Obviously this is a large order for a group of laymen, whose
knowledge of the laws governing the writing of prescriptions
may be supposed to be rather cursory. Generally speaking, the
writing of prescriptions would be supposed to be very much a
part of a physician’s business. On just what basis are we to
decide whether the writing of these particular prescriptions was
felonious ?
One answer might be: Call in some physicians as experts,
and let them enlighten us. Well, a dozen or so physicians are
called in, and they babble by the hour about all manner of
obscure medical topics — not one sentence in ten having any
meaning at all for the harassed listeners. On the salient point
about the prescriptions, they appear to be agreed: — ^it was quite
in accordance with good medical practice that these prescrip-
tions should have been issued.
That might seem to give something to go by. But, on the
other hand, here are the representatives of the “Government”
— forever reminding us that they are just that — clamorously
pleading that the physician who wrote the prescriptions did not
Hobson’s Choice
197
act in good faith; that he had no legal right to do what he did.
It is even urged that patriotism and good citizenship demand
the stamping out of such acts of criminality as those here
brought to light. If such guilt is allowed to go unpunished,
heaven knows where the country will land.
And now that other representative of the Government, the
august Court — ensconsed there on the high throne, with wide-
spread emblem starred and striped on the wall at his back —
takes a hand, and in sepulchral tones assures the jurors that
this trial is “a solemn and decorous investigation by the Gov-
ernment [always the Government, you note], as to whether or
not a particular crime has been committed by the accused.”
There follows an hour-long discourse, in which the jury is in-
formed that it may disregard all medical testimony if it sees fit
(there being no other testimony of any significance whatso-
ever) ; but that it must accept the Imw precisely as the Court
states it.
After which, the Court shapes the interpretation of the law
to suit its own prejudices and preconceptions — with fine disre-
gard of the obvious connotations of the statute itself and of the
Supreme Court decision as to its meaning. To complete the
demonstration, the Court may conclude (as in a specific case I
have in mind) with a long series of quotations from selected
parts of the testimony of one medical witness (testimony
originally elicited by questions of the Court), giving tre-
mendous emphasis to a casual view of obvious disadvantage to
the defense; and finish without the slightest reference to the
testimony of eight or ten other physicians of at least equal
standing and authority.
The jury retires; sends presently for the transcript of (a)
the testimony of this one physician and (b) the judge’s
harangue — and for no other item of testimony, of the 3,500
pages available.
198
Drug Addicts Are Human Beings
And the verdict, of course, supports the Government;
though it would be a safe wager that no member of that jury
had any clear-cut idea as to what the crime might be that was
charged; nor any definite reason for finding the defendant
guilty, other than obedience to the obvious wishes of the “Gov-
ernment,” as vociferously presented by U. S. Attorney and
Court.
In support of this appraisal, let me tell you what happened in
a Federal court, where a physician was twice tried before the
same judge for “crimes” that were absolutely identical in char-
acter — differing only as to the names of patients and the dates
on which they were treated.
At the first trial, the physician was acquitted. It was agreed
by judge and jury that what he had done was perfectly legal
and in effect commendable. He had every reason to continue
the treatments — and did so.
At the second trial (two years later), the physician was con-
victed, and the judge who before approved his action now
sentenced him to seven years in the penitentiary and a fine of
ten thousand dollars.
The discrepancy obviously calls for explanation. Fortunately
I can supply the explanation. Here it is :
At the time of the first trial, the judge was a recent ap-
pointee, whom the narcotics authorities had apparently over-
looked. He had not found out what is expected of Federal
judges in these narcotics cases. So he merely read the Statute
and the Supreme Court decisions, and instructed the jury in
accordance with these findings. The jury, being thus informed
that the physician had a perfect right to treat the patients as he
had done, naturally decided that no crime had been committed,
and said so.
But immediately there was great clamor from the champions
of the dope peddler. From Washington came an emissary of
Hobson’s Choice
199
the Narcotics Bureau, who (as I am reliably informed), took
the judge to task, and represented that such interpretations of
the law as he had given (following the Supreme Court) were
subversive of all the repressive work of the Bureau. Local
“humanitarians” — perhaps unwittingly under influence of the
dope ring — interviewed the judge with similar intent. What-
ever other influences were brought to bear, I do not pretend to
say. But the net result was to be evidenced when another stool-
pigeon frame-up had brought the physician again to court.
Now the judicial atmosphere had changed. No longer was
there simple interpretation of the Law. No longer was it
evident that a physician has a right to treat his patients in ac-
cordance with his best professional judgment. It was indeed
admitted that the Harrison Act is a tax measure, but the prac-
tical meaning of this was permitted to be obscured by mislead-
ing questions; and the general complexion of affairs so changed
and obfuscated that the jury had no difficulty at all in catching
the intonation of the “Government’s” voice.
So now the acts that before had been legal, ethical, and com-
mendable had become illegal, unethical, and felonious. Twelve
hypodermic injections administered in the physician’s ofl&ce,
and the (disputed) dispensation of one small dose of morphine,
became thirteen felonies — each possibly punishable by a fine
of $2,000 and five years’ imprisonment; — ^aggregating $26,000
fine and 65 years’ incarceration.
The judge, however (recalling, perhaps, that before he was
“wised up” he had thought the physician’s conduct unexcep-
tionable), did not pronounce so severe a sentence. He cut the
fine to a mere $10,000, and softened tlie prison sentence to one
term of three years and two of four years — the latter to run
concurrently, so that the actual elective prison term was only
seven years.
A notable triumph of “justice,” as interpreted by all true
200
Drug Addicts Are Human Beings
friends of the Dope Ring. Incidentally, a minor illustration of
the effect of the softening process referred to may be noted:
Not long after the physician was in prison, the chief stool
pigeon who had aided in his conviction (and who had been
presented to the jury as “cured” in jail), was before the Court
for having forged a prescription for narcotics; and was given
a sentence of one year and a day in a jail of his own selection.
Shortly afterward, another adict (who had not aided the
“Government”) was before the judge on precisely the same
charge, and was given two years in Leavenworth prison — with
the admonition that the sentence might have been five years,
and would have been except that the addict had never com-
mitted a violent crime. (It is aside from the present point to
note that opium addicts practically never do commit violent
crimes — despite much puerile palaver to the contrary.)
The discrepancy between one year in jail and two years in
the penitentiary for exactly the same crime is of no great
moment (except to the party of the second part); but it is
interesting to note that the combined sentences of the two
prescription-forgers make less than half the term of imprison-
ment (overlooking the |10,000 fine) of the physician who, in
the “unsoftened” view of the magistrate had committed no
crime at all.
These, however, are complicating details. Our intent was
merely to illustrate the power of a potentate on the Federal
bench to dictate the verdict ostensibly rendered by a jury. It
is that power, used in conjunction with the magic of the
cognate governmental department, the office of the United
States Attorney, which has determined the conviction of five
thousand physicians, first and last, for alleged violation of the
Harrison Special Tax Act.
Chapter XXX
Qontempt of Supreme Qourt
W E PAY no attention to the Linder decision.”
Such was the brazen statement, from the witness
chair, of a narcotics agent, representing the Government, at the
trial of a physician at Seattle, in August, 1936. I mention the
date, because the avowal is thus shown to have been made seven
months after the Supreme Court, in the A A A decision, had
shown that they pay a great deal of attention to that decision —
inasmuch as it was quoted, and cited a second time with re-
iterated emphasis in the famous decision of January 6, 1936.
“The Federal Government cannot regulate the practice of a
profession.” That was the explicit statement of Justice Roberts,
speaking for the Court. And the profession specifically con-
cerned, in the decision of 1925 now reiterated, was medicine.
And, as it chanced, the Linder case, specifically cited, was the
case of a Seattle physician. It was only a coincidence, of course
— yet serving to give an added touch of insolence — that the
agent’s disavowal should be made in the city from which the
famous Linder case issued.
Doubtless similar comment had been made in many other
Federal courts. For the matter of that, I have elsewhere re-
corded that an equivalent disavowal of the cogency of the
Linder decision was once made to me, in person, in the presence
of Assistant Attorney General Joseph Keenan, by a Mr. Fisher
who was presented to me as the narcotics specialist of the De-
partment of Justice. That disavowal, however, though abso-
lutely unwarranted, as the sequel showed, could be in some
201
202
Drug Addicts Are Human Bemgs
measure excused on the ground that the Linder decision was
nine years old, antedating the existence of the present Bureau
of Narcotics; coupled with the fact that it had been sedulously
ignored by the narcotics authorities.
But soon afterward came the N R A decision, proving the
illegality of the Narcotics Code; and then the AAA decision,
with its specific authentication of the Linder ruling.
That a narcotics oflScer should blatantly put the Linder de-
cision aside after that (and do so under oath, in an attempt to
railroad an innocent physician to prison), may be taken to
represent about the last word of contempt for decisions of the
Supreme Court on the part of officials of the Narcotics Bureau.
The thumbed nose by way of salute for the “old men of the
(nominally) Supreme Court.” And the joke of the matter is
that there is not a thing the said old men can do about it.
Their actual authority is Nil. Were it otherwise, the Blackmail
Code of the Narcotics Bureau would long since have ceased
to pursue its unconstitutional devastating way.
The sponsors of the Code, which in its very existence flouts
the Law, are naturally not concerned about the manhandling
of any other law that chances to stand in their way. They
prove that in every narcotics trial. At the particular trial now
under discussion, a new illustration was given of the high re-
gard in which the “Government” holds Federal statutes.
Doubtless the idea originated with the narcotics authorities, but
the expositor was the United States Attorney who prosecuted
the physician.
The case offered complications that made the application of
the usual formula of dubious value. In the first place, the
physician administered the morphine in his office, by hypo-
dermic injection. He could not, therefore, be accused of plac-
ing narcotics in the hands of a patient in excess quantities, to
be bartered. Therefore no possible charge of “bad faith,” in the
203
Contempt of Supreme Court
legal sense, could be entertained. As to medical good faith
(with which, incidentally, the Federal law has no valid con-
cern), he showed his belief that the patients needed the
medicine by giving them doses that would have been lethal had
the patients not been valid sufferers from addiction disease; —
also, incidentally, by benefiting the patients.
In the second place, the physician had been tried once be-
fore, under an earlier indictment, for precisely the same al-
leged violation of the Harrison Law; and the Judge at that
trial had ruled that any person who comes to a physician’s
office for treatment is a valid patient under the law, and that
the physician has a right to treat drug addiction precisely as he
treats any other disease. The jury had acquitted the physician.
It speaks volumes for the pertinacity (if less than paragraphs
for the candor and honesty) of the narcotics authorities that a
second indictment should have been brought, with carefully
trained stool pigeons for witnesses, though what the physician
had done was precisely what he had done before, and been
declared by Judge and jury to be fully entitled to do. But, as I
said, the prosecution now needed to think up some new type of
skulduggery to overcome these handicaps.
The new deal offered included a trick card fashioned on or
suggested by a provision of the Harrison Law itself — ^ignoring
the Code for the moment. This is an essential clause of Section
I of the Act, which states:
“That there shall be levied, assessed, collected, and paid upon (nar-
cotic drugs) ... an internal-revenue tax at the rate of 1 cent per ounce,
and any fraction of an ounce in a package shall be taxed as an ounce,
such tax to be paid by the importer, manufacturer, producer, or com-
pounder thereof, and to be represented by appropriate stamps provided
by the Commissioner of Internal Revenue, with the approval of the
Secretary of the Treasury; and the stamps herein provided shall be so
affixed to the bottle or other container as to securely seal the stopper,
covering, or wrapper thereof.”
204
Drug Addicts Are Human Beings
Now I submit that language could hardly be made to ex-
press an idea more explicitly, completely, and unequivocally
than that. Even the split infinitive seems to justify itself. We
are told what the tax is, who pays it, and how the evidence of
payment is presented. When the package comes to the retail
dealer (the druggist), it bears the stamp “securely” sealing the
bottle or container; in proof that the last modicum of tax has
been squeezed out of the commodity. No one for a moment
contemplated any further tax to be paid by any one.
Moreover, as a matter of practical fact, during the twenty-one
years the law had been in force, it is highly improbable that any
one had ever been asked to pay a further tax, let alone actually
paying it. When the package is opened, the seal is broken,
and the commodity is dispensed to the ultimate consumer,
usually in very small quantities. How would any one go about
paying a tax on these fragmentary quantities, and to whom
would it be paid }
Upward of sixty tons a year of opium and its derivatives have
been distributed for twenty-one years, without that question
ever having been raised — for the obvious reason that any one
who can read simple English must see at a glance that the
Harrison Law neither suggests nor contemplates such an ab-
surdity.
But now comes forward a United States Attorney to brand
himself either a sub-Moron or the other thing by regaling the
ears of the jurors with a series of questions, propounded to one
witness after another, as to whether they gave the physician a
written order for the morphine that was injected into their
arms, and whether to their knowledge a one-cent tax was paid
by the physician for the morphine contained in each injection.
Funny Of course it’s funny, from your standpoint and
mine. But what about the physician whom the “Government”
has determined to “get” by foul means, no fair means being
205
Contempt of Supreme Court
available? Please consider that the jury knows nothing about
the law. They merely learn now, that this physician failed to
pay a tax which, the prosecutor clearly implies, must have been
paid if the law had been complied with.
The chances are that the defense counsel, taken by surprise,
will not have the wit to insist on having the words of the law
read to the jury. He may not even look up the law himself.
More than likely he will assume that the law does provide that
no transfer of a narcotic drug shall be made without an order
and the payment of a tax — overlooking the absurdity of such
an exaction, with at least a hundred million prescriptions a
year involved.
It probably will not occur to him to ask whether the victim of
an automobile accident, pinned under the car, must write an
order before a physician can give him a hypodermic to relieve
his agony? And whether the physician, having given the
hypodermic, must then hand out a cent to somebody — ^and if so,
to whom ?
And even if the questions are asked, and the true situation
revealed (it being clearly noted that the physician is neither
“importer, manufacturer, producer, nor compounder” of the
drug), the fact remains that an impression has been made on
the minds of the jurors that may not readily be effaced. It is by
producing such impressions, and a general confusion of ideas,
that convictions are obtained in 95 per cent of such trials; —
and not by the presentation of valid evidence or the revelation
of truth.
In a word, to speak bluntly, these trials are won by skuldug-
gery. I know no better word for the method. And I affirm,
with a sense of humiliation, that no sincere and honest person
who sits through an average trial of this sort in a Federal court,
with full knowledge and understanding of what is going on,
can ever again have confidence in the integrity of the Depart-
2o6
Drug Addicts Are Human Beings
ment of Justice, as represented by the minions who are of-
ficially entitled to speak of themselves as the “Government.
As I have said before, the very name Government in the
mouths of men who would resort to such trickery as I have just
illustrated is an offense and a profanation. That such men are
empowered to scoff at law, and thumb their noses at the august
tribunal of the Supreme Bench is a reproach to our judicial
system.
Chapter XXXI
l^he Solicitor Qeneral Does His Dit
I CHANCE to have first-hand personal knowledge of three
interesting cases that made their way to the threshold of
the domain of the Supreme Court during the year 1937. What
I mean is that these cases were appealed from decisions of
Appellate Courts, on petition for writ of certiorari, and thus
came under the eye of the Solicitor General of the United States
— who presented them to the Supreme Court in such wise that
they were denied further hearing. Yet, I affirm with great con-
fidence that, had the members of the Supreme Court known
what I know about these cases, they would not only have
granted the writ, but, after the hearings, would have reversed
the lower-court decision in each instance.
In saying this, I do not mean to imply any criticism of the
Solicitor General, whose partisan presentation thus resulted in
what I conceive to be the negation of justice. It is the business
of a Solicitor General to make partisan presentation of every
case that comes before him. An Appeal from the verdict of a
lower court is, in effect (and in name) a suit in which the
United States is the defendant. The Solicitor General is that
defendant’s attorney. The charge, in effect, is that the United
States (through action of its official representatives in a lower
court) has won an unjust or unfair decision. The Solicitor,
like any other defense attorney, must deny this charge, and at-
tempt to sustain the denial.
In practical terms, this means that he must answer the argu-
ments on which the Appeal is based. These arguments must,
207
2o8
Drug Addicts Are Human Beings
in theory, refer to matters of legal procedure — not to matters of
fact in evidence. In other words, it is no valid part of the
Appeal to attempt proof of the appellant’s innocence of the
charge of which he was convicted. The point at issue must
solely concern the technicalities of court procedure or a question
of constitutional law. And, by the same token, the Solicitor
General’s response should be concerned with these matters only.
But it often happens, here as elsewhere in this practical world,
that theory and actuality diverge rather widely. And so we
may find that the Appeal makes mention of factual matters
having no legal bearings; and that the persons who prepare the
reply for the Solicitor General have presented evidential mat-
ters far afield from any legitimate question for Supreme Court
consideration. Which after all is only to say that the officials
concerned in these affairs are human beings, with ordinary
human prejudices and preconceptions.
Such being the case, however, it is not without interest to ask
just who the “persons” referred to are, and what is the nature
of their prejudices and preconceptions, when narcotics cases are
in question. Such an inquiry does not directly involve the
Solicitor General himself; for it goes without saying that this
official, having to do with a multitude of cases on every con-
ceivable subject, must depend on “experts” in various fields to
prepare the defense documents that he subsequently sponsors
before the Supreme Court.
The “experts” in question are, as a matter of course, em-
ployes of the Department of Justice. I chance to have had
personal contact with one of these “experts” in the office of the
Attorney General of the United States. And I was by him as-
sured, in the presence of Assistant Attorney General Joseph B.
Keenan, that the Linder decision of the Supreme Court (which
denied Federal control over the practice of medicine) had been
rescinded by later decisions.
'The Solicitor General Does His Bit
209
As a matter of fact, the Linder decision not only had not
been rescinded, but it had been several times re-affirmed; and
a few months later was to be again affirmed in precise and em-
phatic terms, in the course of the famous AAA decision, where
it was twice cited, quoted verbatim as to its essential tenet, and
stated as basic law.
I stress these details because the fanatic who thus mis-stated
the law, and denied its salient content in 1934, was still in the
same position of trust, supposedly interpreting the law for the
Solicitor General, in 1937, when the cases about which I am
writing came up for consideration. The leopard does not
change his spots. I have evidence that the same spirit that
actuated the fanatic in 1934 dominated him in 1937, and led to
such presentation of the evidential facts of one of the three cases
as had no proper place in the document that went to the
Supreme Court — facts that were not properly adverse to the
appellant, but which could be made to take on an inculpatory
complexion.
Let me elucidate. The conviction from which the physician
appealed involved the “crime” of administering morphine by
hypodermic injection to patients in his office. Appellant
claimed that there could be no possibility of defrauding the
Government of taxes, since the patient could not dispose of
medicine that was in his blood stream. Nevertheless, the Ap-
pellate Court (in one of the weirdest decisions ever rendered)
had declared that the Government had been defrauded of such
tax. That decision was the matter now challenged, a simple,
tangible, question of interpretation of a tax law.
But the question that came to the Supreme Court, via the
“expert” of the Department of Justice, had no such simplicity.
Interpreted by the fanatic, the entire complexion of the case
was changed. And it was a foregone conclusion that the
Supreme Court, casually scanning this case along with hun-
210
Drug Addicts Are Human Beings
dreds of others, would toss it aside without discovering that,
amidst the verbiage, a constitutional question was concealed.
Had the smoke-screen verbiage been omitted, it would have
been clear that this was a case where a circuit court of appeals
had “decided a federal question in a way probably in conflict
with a decision of the Supreme Court” (in the words of Chief
Justice Hughes), and, therefore, a case where granting of the
writ of certiorari would be fully justified. There is little doubt
as to what the final decision would have been, had this been
granted, and the case thus brought, in due course, before the
Court in open session.
Thus it appears that, the machinery of Appeal being what
it is, the function of decision is in actuality usurped by a minor
official of the Department of Justice — ^with the more or less
conscious cooperation of the Solicitor General of the United
States; the Supreme Court scarcely participating except in
rubber-stamp capacity.
What happened in this case may be taken as typical not
alone of the two other cases of 1937, but of a score of earlier
cases. Not since 1926 has a single case of a physician convicted
of violation of the Harrison Act gained a hearing before the
Supreme Court. Even the few that gained the threshhold of
the Court on petition for writ of certiorari found that last bar-
rier of the fanatics {ipso facto members of the dope ring, what-
ever their intention) impassable.
Thus is justice flouted by fanaticism in the political bureau
known as the Department of Justice.
Chapter XXXII
,J\darihuana — l^ew Opportunity for the
T(acJ{eteer
T he N R a and AAA decisions left little doubt in the
minds of competent observers that the Harrison Law, in
its application to physicians, will be declared unconstitutional
when the matter is first put to a test — as it will be in the near
future. Therefore it behooved the racketeers to cast about for
a new coigne of vantage. It occurred to some one that an old
familiar drug recently given publicity under a new name might
serve the purpose. This drug is known to the medical profes-
sion as Cannabis Indica. The new name, adopted from Mexico,
is Marihuana (Spanish Marijuana).
If there had been any sincere belief that this substance con-
stitutes or might become a menace to public health or morals,
nothing would have been simpler than to ask for an amend-
ment to the Harrison Act, in which the name Cannabis, or
Marihuana would be added to the names opium and cocoa.
But this would by no means have served the desired purpose,
because, in the first instance, cannabis, unlike opium, is not a
drug of great significance (seldom being prescribed by physi-
cians), and, secondly (and to the purpose), the rescinding of
the Harrison Act would involve cannabis as well, and thus nip
the prospective mariliuana racket in the bud.
(This is no mere conjecture. The proponents of the Mari-
huana bill presently introduced, in discussions before the Con-
gressional Q)mmittee of the Judiciary, stated that one reason
2II
212
Drug Addicts Are Human Beings
why it was desirable to have a new law was precisely that the
constitutionality of the Harrison Act might be challenged, and
that the proposal to amend that act by introducing marihuana
might bring matters to a climax.)
So a Marihuana Tax bill was introduced, and presently en-
acted as Federal law. And the foundation was thus laid for a
racket that should quite eclipse even the billion-dollar illicit
drug industry that the Harrison Act (as misinterpreted) de-
veloped and fostered. For the new drug has qualities that put
it in a class by itself.
For example: Marihuana, despite its high-sounding name, is
merely a product of the familiar hemp plant — an agricultural
product to which (according to statements made before the
Congressional committee) upward of 10,000 acres of land in
the United States are devoted. Leaves and flowers of any of
these plants supply material for the marihuana cigarettes which,
we are asked to believe, are a menace to American youth today.
But that is only the beginning. The hemp plant is not only
cultivated extensively, but it grows wild in countless fields,
neglected gardens, fence corners, and back yards. And the new
law, enacted in 1937, permits its cultivation anywhere and by
anyone who cares to pay a one-dollar tax for the privilege. In
addition to this, it appears that upward of 23,000 tons of seeds
of the plant are imported annually; and it was testified that
these carry a modicum of the resin that contains the allegedly
obnoxious marihuana.
It was naively (?) suggested that importers of seed intended
for making oil, etc. should be required to “sterilize” it by heat-
ing — ^which would interfere in nowise with the marihuana-
quality of the tons of material.
In a word, then, here is opportunity that should reconcile the
racketeers to the loss of the billions that will no longer be
available from narcotics after the Harrison Act is rescinded and
213
Marihuana — ISlew Opportunity for the Rac\eteer
the drug addict is thus rescued from their clutches. To be
sure, the medical and pharmaceutical professions cannot be
largely used as stalking horses, because doctors do not prescribe
cannabis and druggists use it only in a few proprietary nostroms
(corn medicines, for instance), from which it can readily be
omitted. But with the aid of newspaper propaganda, already
started, an interest will be created in the alleged allurements of
marihuana-smoking; and the army of inspectors sent out to ex-
plore the milhons of fields on which the weed may grow need
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214
Drug Addicts Are Human Beings
only apply, with slight modifications, the methods learned in
the conduct of the narcotics racket, in order to develop a
marihuana industry that should eclipse the billion-dollar illicit
narcotics racket of today.
Racketeers who developed a billion-dollar illicit drug in-
dustry, using opium that had to be smuggled into the country,
should have no difficulty at all in developing a five-billion dollar
racket with marihuana — ^provided only that the press can be
induced to stimulate curiosity by giving the drug publicity.
Already a good beginning has been made. A recent maga-
zine article conveyed the impression that marihuana is rampant
as a chief promotor of sex crimes; it being noted in particular
that several hideous crimes committed in Los Angeles were
instigated by use of this drug.
On the basis of these claims, a representative of the White
Cross Association on Drug Addictions took occasion, during his
recent investigation of narcotic conditions in Los Angeles, to
make inquiry about the prevalence of this alleged new menace.
A single statistical item will adequately sum up his findings:
During the month of August, 1937 (just prior to the investiga-
tion), police records of Los Angeles told of the arrest of 20,824
persons. Among these, just two persons were named as being
in possession of marihuana — though no suggestion was made
that this drug had any connection with any crime with which
they were associated.
During the same month there were not far from one hundred
automobile deaths in Los Angeles, a large percentage due to
drunken drivers. Incidentally, there were just 6 arrests of nar-
cotic addicts during the month, for violation of narcotic laws.
During the fiscal year there had been 100,560 arrests, including
834 on narcotics charges, about one-third of these being addicts,
whose crimes seldom attained the dignity of anything more
formidable than petty larceny. During the past five years, with
215
Marihuana — 'New Opportunity for the Racl^eteer
total arrests never lower than 89,909 (and three times above
100,000), the average narcotics arrests were 799 — including ped-
dlers and smugglers as well as addicts.
Browse a little on these typical figures; and when next you
hear the narcotics addict (or the marihuana smoker) named
as a “major criminal,” permit yourself the indulgence of a quiet
laugh, remembering meantime that you, if the head of a
family, are being taxed about $80 a year because the “major
criminal” fiction is kept up, and the billion-dollar dope racket
thereby given countenance.
BOOK V
From Star Qhamber to Qourt of Justice
Chapter XXXIII
Star Qhamher
I HOPE I have made clear the opinion that the “trials” of
physicians in Federal courts for alleged violation of the
Harrison Act are not trials at all, in the great majority of cases,
in any proper sense of the word. They are Star Chamber
proceedings, in which the men who call themselves the “Gov-
ernment” go out to “get” their man by fair means or foul —
seldom confining themselves to the former.
The name “Government” in the mouths of these men is kin
to blasphemy. But the word is ever on their Pharisaical tongues.
They make such use of it that one’s gorge rises as one listens.
I wish to make this matter unequivocally clear. These
“trials,” I say, are not trials by law. They are star-chamber
persecutions by illegal, unconstitutional Code at the outset, sup-
plemented by trickery, false innuendo, and not infrequently by
perjury or the subornation of perjury. The attorneys who con-
duct the “trial” are perfectly aware what they are doing. The
judge is either aware of what is happening or else he is an
ignoramus who has no proper place on the bench.
The attorney is permitted to strive to make the accused
physician a trafl&cker in drugs.
Both attorney and judge are perfectly aware that there are
scores of actual traffickers in the same drugs (dope peddlers)
within pistol shot of the courtroom, whom no one attempts to
intercept.
Both are aware that, even if everything charged against the
physician were true, he has done nothing but compete, on an
insignificant scale, with the dope peddler whom they ignore.
219
220
Drug Addicts Are Human Beings
But in the vast majority of cases the charge cuts deeper than
that. Attorney and court are aware that the physician was not
a trafficker in drugs. They are aware that they are prosecuting
an honest, sincere, conscientious practitioner of medicine, who
has done nothing illegal or unethical — nor even violated the
tenets of the Narcotics Code.
The United States Attorney who pressed the suit vindictively
against the Clinic physicians referred to in earlier chapters of
this book (the suit for closure of the Narcotics Clinic, that the
patients might be restored to the dope peddler) personally as-
sured a friend of mine that he knew the “history of the chief
clinic physician from A to Z, and had nothing but admiration
for him.” He repeated the statement, in substance, on different
occasions, to two other friends of mine — the three persons who
give me this assurance being personally unknown to one an-
other.
What reason did the Government prosecutor give for vindic-
tively pressing a suit that on its face was ridiculous } He had
one answer for all inquiries:
“Pressure from Washington.”
Pressure from Washington. That is the story. Pressure that
involved procedures which, as I have elsewhere shown in de-
tail, are at least close to the line of malfeasance in office, and far
over the line of sincerity, candor, or honor.
Why is such pressure exerted ? For answer, turn back to al-
most any chapter of this book. Or rather, recall the import of
the presentation, and read on here as I present a tabloid re-
capitulation — before going forward.
Recall, then, that the Harrison Act, the only law involved, is
crystal clear in its application to the professional activities of
the physician. It demands simply that the physician who
would handle narcotic drugs (the most essential drugs in the
Pharmacopoeia) shall register annually, and keep a record of
Star Chamber
221
narcotics transactions. It is casually mentioned that he uses the
drugs in the “legitimate” practice of his profession, in dealing
with his “patients.”
In the court of Judge Bowen, of Seattle, the word “patient”
was defined, as we shall see, as “one who applies to a physician
for the alleviation of pain or distress.” But the world had
waited twenty long years for that simple, common-sense in-
terpretation. Had that definition been given in the Harrison
Act itself, the entire history of court procedure in hundreds of
cases would have been different from what it has been.
Unfortunately, no definition was given; and the star-chamber
“trials” we are considering have been conducted on the assump-
tion that it is the business of judge and jury to distort the plain
meaning of words at will, declaring, in effect, that a person who
applies in dire distress to a physician, and receives treatment
that alleviates his distress, is not a patient within the meaning
of the law, unless a narcotics agent (a layman, of course) so
decides.
The physician may have thought he was treating a patient.
But the narcotics agent declares that the treatment given, even
though it benefited the sufferer, was no proper treatment, but
a felony.
And tlie United States Attorney undertakes to sustain that
view of the matter.
Let me once more repeat that the ensuing procedure, at every
stage, is sheer hypocrisy. If you analyze the volleys of testimony
that are presented to befog the minds of the jury, you will find
that it is never expressly claimed that any act of the physician,
considered in itself, violates any law. It is not denied that the
physician may properly treat, in any way he sees fit, any valid
patient that comes to him. It is not claimed that the physician
must make a correct diagnosis; nor that he must be successful
in his treatment.
222
Drug Addicts Are Human Beings
These questions, to be sure, are debated at great length be-
fore the jury, with introduction of medical experts aplenty.
But this is only for camouflage effect. Such testimony has no
direct pertinence. It is not claimed to be pertinent, except for
an ulterior purpose. It is never denied that the doctor is sole
judge of the patient’s condition or disease; the sole arbiter of
drug and dosage; the exclusive decider of any and every medical
question. It is not claimed, even, that the Harrison Law puts
any restriction on the treatment of drug addiction, in an am-
bulatory patient, in any dosage that may be required.
What, then, conceivably, is claimed.? On what basis is it
alleged that the physician has feloniously evaded the Harrison
Law.?
The answer, in last analysis, is always the same (though by
no means always is the answer made known to the jury).
The answer is this: The physician is alleged to have acted
feloniously, because it is asserted that he did not treat the
patient in good faith. It is asserted that the physician did not
conscientiously believe that the patient needed the medicine
given, in the dose administered, to relieve actual pain or distress
or in any way to benefit him. In the last analysis, that is the
only charge. The attempt to prove that the physician’s acts
were not “in accord with good medical usage” is merely to sus-
tain the charge of “bad faith.” No one pretends that there is
any fixed standard of “good medical practice” that can be ap-
plied to any and every case.
The principle that can be applied, is the elemental principle
of the exercise of “good faith” in dealing with the patient.
In dealing with this pair of words, juridical trickery reaches
its apogee. There is of course nothing in the Harrison Act
about good faith. There could be no attempt, under that law,
to estimate the nature of the physician’s motives, in the ordinary
sense of the word, in dealing with his patients. No Federal law
Star Chamber
223
has any control or jurisdiction over matters of professional ac-
tion between physician and patient. (But the jury will never
find this out.)
What the Harrison Act could demand is that the physician,
in handling narcotics, acts as a physician; — that he is dealing
with a valid patient. If, for example, the physician wrote a
prescription calling for ten grains of morphine a day, to be
taken by a patient who was known to the physician not to be a
drug addict, that would be a clear violation of the law, because
no person not an addict could take such doses and live. The
inference would be that the physician designed that the patient
should barter the drug. He would thus become party to an
illicit sale. In other words, he would be a trafficker — and not
a physician at all in any proper sense of the word.
We have seen that this is precisely the thing that the prosecu-
tor attempts to establish, by ways devious and deceitful; and that
he usually succeeds, through confusing in the minds of the jury
this legal “bad faith” with the idea of bad faith in its ordinary
sense. The reason why the prosecutor must use hypocritical
methods is simply that he is perfectly aware that the physician
did not show bad faith in either sense; but aware also that
good faith, in the medical sense, is something that is fairly be-
yond the domain of proof.
How shall you evaluate a physician’s motive in a given line of
treatment? By the result? But that cannot be; because it is
expressly admitted that intentions may be excellent and results
deplorable. How then ? By proving, perhaps, that the doctor
gave medicine to a patient who did not need the medicine?
But this patient did need the medicine. He was an addict, who
could not get along, and remain sane, without the medicine.
What then? Well, the physician gave him more of the medi-
cine than he needed — more than he would personally use.
And the proof of that ? Well, of course there is no proof, be-
224
Drug Addicts Are Human Beings
cause it isn’t true. The physician gave only the dose that the
patient admits having taken habitually, day by day, for the
past twenty years. Are we then at an impasse? Not at all.
We (the prosecution) will simply leave the actual issue out of
consideration, and begin to introduce a series of witnesses to
deal with any and every irrelevant aspect of drug addiction and
other diseases. We will prove that the usual dose of morphine
for normal people is one-eighth of a grain, instead of the ten
grains given this (abnormal) patient. We will not even admit,
for that matter, that only ten grains were given this patient.
We will deal with the aggregate prescriptions, over a term of
weeks, and muddle the computations until no one can tell what
was given— the jury by this time forgetting the import of the
original testimony of the patient himself.
We need not repeat the rest of the story. You have heard it
in some detail in earlier chapters. The import of it is that in
something over 95 cases in a hundred, the ultimate effect is to
confuse the jury absolutely (and the defending counsel and
sometimes the judge no less), so that it is decided that the
physician did show bad faith (a felonious matter), though the
clear testimony, if it could be exhumed, shows that he gave the
patient, in the best of faith, the smallest dose of morphine on
which the patient could subsist, to the marked benefit and
satisfaction of the patient himself.
And the Prosecutor, you may be sure, receives high com-
mendation “from Washington,” over the victory in which he
thus made the worse appear the better part — and put the brand
of felon on an innocent, upright, and honorable physician.
That may be the prosecutor’s only reward. But he is always
open to the suspicion of receiving a more tangible tribute from
the person directly benefited — the Dope Peddler.
Chapter XXXIV
Dubious Ethics
I N A recent narcotics case in a Federal court, with a physi-
cian under the usual type of indictment, the Judge stated,
in his final charge acquitting the defendant, that he would
have felt justified in dismissing the case at the end of the
prosecution’s case, had it not been that two physicians, posing as
expert witnesses, had testified that they did not consider the
narcotic treatment of the patients named to be justifiable.
They, the experts, would not treat an ambulatory addict under
any consideration.
This view was much more than counteracted, in the opinion
of the judge, by the testimony of other experts, who in due
course declared the treatment to have been not only justifiable
but admirable — one of the experts citing the Hippocratic oath
in substantiation of the statement that a physician who re-
fused to give aid to an afflicted person who appealed to him was
unworthy of his profession. So the matter came out right in
the end (unlike most such trials), but our point of the moment
concerns, not the result, but the method involved. Specifically,
the question of medical testimony, introduced by the Govern-
ment, in the attempt (usually successful) to convict physicians
who are charged with violation of the Harrison Law.
Let us briefly review the conditions. A regularly qualified
and properly registered physician is accused of treating a
patient improperly. Not to the detriment of the patient, nor
to the dissatisfaction of the patient; quite the contrary. The
narcotics he administered enabled the patient to go about the
225
226
Drug Addicts Are Human Beings
normal duties of the day, in comfort, as he could not have done
w^ithout the drug. There is no dispute as to that point. But
the Government claims that the physician had no right to aid
the patient in that way. It claims that no addict patient, while
at large, may legally be treated with narcotics in quantity or
manner to “comfort his addiction” — that is to say, to make him
tolerably comfortable, and enable him to conduct himself nor-
mally.
It seems a strange contention (and as we know, the law does
not sustain any such thesis), but the Government upholds it
none the less, and brings forward alleged expert physicians to
sustain the claim. There are commonly two such “experts
called, as in the case just mentioned. Very commonly, also, in a
large community, the same “experts” are called in successive
narcotics cases, constituting the mainstay of the prosecution.
Just what are these medical witnesses asked to prove.?
Well, of course they do not prove anything, except, perhaps,
that there are certain lacunae in their moral makeup. What
they testify to, is that they would not treat an ambulatory addict.
They believe that addicts should be treated only in institutions.
They themselves never treat an ambulatory addict. No, indeed.
Now if you, dear reader, are not familiar with the methods of
procedure in Federal courts, you may guilelessly suppose that,
if it chances to be true that the “expert” witness never treats any
human patients at all, but is solely concerned with laboratory
experiments on rats and mice, this fact might be readily brought
to the attention of the jury.
Guess again, dear reader. In all probability the jury will
never learn that this physician is not a practicing doctor, nor
that he is utterly incompetent to deal with a human patient of
any type.
Nor will they be made clearly to understand that, whereas
there are perhaps four thousand addicts in the community.
Dubious Ethics
227
there are not fifty beds available in any institution to which
they could be sent.
Nor, again, will they grasp the idea that these addicts are
mostly persons who, if permitted to secure the drug they need,
are normal-seeming individuals, suffering no more in body,
mind, or morals from the use of morphine than the average
tobacco user suffers from the use of cigarettes.
Yet again, it will never be clear to the jury that the particular
patients treated by the physician under indictment, suffered
from incurable maladies other than addiction, and can never by
any possibility be cured permanently of their addiction.
In a word, the jury will never suspect that the only rational
thing to do with these patients is to enable them to secure day
by day the modicum of morphine they need, at the least
possible expense, while receiving whatever other treatment may
be required.
And the main reason why these simple truths cannot be
brought to the knowledge and understanding of the jurors is
that the “expert” physicians called by the prosecution will dog-
gedly express the opinion that “no ambulatory addict should
be treated with narcotics.”
In expressing this opinion, which must seem senseless to any-
one who at all comprehends the conditions, as just outlined, the
“expert” is not merely making a statement of a personal view,
which might be permissible enough, however fatuous, at a
medical meeting or even before a general audience. He is, in
effect, doing his utmost to condemn a fellow physician as a
felon — pronouncing a colleague, often far outranking him in
position and ability, a law-breaking trafficker, because tliat col-
league’s view differed from his own on a controversial medical
topic.
That would be bad enough, in all conscience, if the “expert”
acted from conviction, and with stupid honesty. But when it
228
Drug Addicts Are Human Beings
happens, as in cases I could name, that the element of personal
spite enters — the “expert” paying off an ancient grudge by en-
deavoring to send his colleague to prison, the exhibition enters
another category.
It is physicians of that type that I have been known to name,
in public addresses, as “yellow dogs of the medical profession.
For the moment, I refrain from mentioning names and citing
cases. But I may not always be so reticent.
Chapter XXXV
Hhree Recent episodes
H ere are two typical episodes, and one that is highly atypi-
cal. The two typicals concern the conviction of physi-
cians for alleged violation of the Harrison Narcotic Law. The
third episode is atypical simply because it concerns the acquital
of a physician whose case was otherwise just like the others.
In all three cases, the charge, of course, was the administra-
tion of morphine to patients that were drug-addict stool pigeons.
The usual hokus pocus of alleged cure of addicts in jail was
introduced; and the conventional claim that the patients were
not suflering from any disease (though admitted to have addic-
tion, which the Supreme Court names as a disease subject to
medical treatment).
There is no valid reason for bringing up either of these mat-
ters in court; for the Harrison Act says nothing whatever about
addiction, nor any other disease; let alone the curability of any
disease. But these matters, introduced solely under aegis of the
unconstitutional “Regulations” (Blackmail Code) of the Nar-
cotics Bureau, are the stock in trade of the “Government” in
prosecuting physicians. No other tricks so surely fool the jury.
In the two typical cases now under consideration, the two
tricks were used effectively — ^as in 95 per cent of all such cases.
The jury accepted the faked evidence of cured addicts (seeming
to prove that the doctors did not try to cure them), and the
testimony of Government witnesses to the effect that the pa-
tients had no maladies other than addiction. They accepted
(how should they know better?) the false statements or in-
22Q
230
Drug Addicts Are Human Beings
sinuations of prosecution and Court to the effect that the phy-
sicians could not legally treat the addicts unless they had other
pathology.”
And so, being thus deceived as to vital issues, they perhaps not
unnaturally found the physicians guilty.
All this was strictly typical, as I said. And the sequels, which
furnish my excuse for this sketch, are equally typical, but for
that very reason the more worth recording. First, as to the
matter of the “cured” addicts. Of course they are never cured,
but only taken off the drug in jail and kept off so long as they
are kept in jail. But it is not always easy to follow the cases
after they are released, to prove that they are back on the drug.
In the first of the typical cases before us, however, the careers
of four “cured” witnesses were made public in short order. Be-
cause they had acted as stool pigeons, they could not readily get
their drugs from peddlers, who now distrusted them. So one
of them applied to the local health officer, begging to be given
morphine. A second appealed to the custodian of the State
Narcotics Farm, asking to be taken in for narcotics treatment.
And the two others (man and wife) were forced to forge pre-
scriptions, to meet their morphine needs, and were arrested and
jailed for so doing. Beyond that, one of the four confessed that
he had helped “frame” the physician by producing a bottle of
morphine solution falsely alleged to have been received from the
physician.
Meantime the physician who was convicted by this framed
and falsified evidence and testimony is serving a seven-year
sentence in a Federal prison (with an added fine of $9,000)—
though innocent of any crime or dereliction.
In the second of the typical cases, the most important witness
was a patient who, according to the claim of the accused phy-
sician, had pulmonary tuberculosis, of severe and advanced type.
Since this is a malady that brings its victim within the exemp-
Three Recent Episodes
231
tion clause of the “Regulations” that do service for law, it was
necessary for the “Government” to refute this claim. So a jail
physician, a prison physician, and two other official employees
(including a prison guard) were put on the stand to testify that
the patient showed no symptoms of this malady, but was, on the
contrary, in perfect health while under their supervision.
This testimony naturally impressed the jury, proving to
their satisfaction that the physician had made a “phoney”
diagnosis in the attempt to cover his malfeasance in treating an
addict unjustifiably (the Government of course making the
usual false claim, in defiance of the ruling of the Supreme
Court, that mere addiction is not a treatable malady).
So the jury found the physician guilty. And it was not till
several weeks later that the patient died in a hospitcd of chronic
pulmonary tuberculosis (death-certificate record), his death be-
ing hastened, no doubt, by lack of morphine — since no physi-
cian had dared to treat him.
That death certificate is a pleasing commentary on the testi-
mony of the two physicians who did their effective best to
swear an innocent colleague into the penitentiary. There are
some very fine men in the medical profession.
Now a few words about our third case — the atypical one.
The interest here lies in the anomaly of acquittal. In particular,
I wish to record the reason for the unusual denouement. Why
did a jury that had the usual type of falsified testimony before
it, depart from tradition and give a rational answer.? Fortu-
nately, I have the statement of the foreman of the jury as to
just why this occurred.
It came about, not through consideration of the evidence as
a whole (which had led the jury to an adverse attitude), but
from the force of a single consideration, forcefully presented by
the defense counsel, Mr. Gordon Lawson. A very simple mat-
ter, but a master stroke, as the result proved.
232 Drug Addicts Are Human Beings
With masterly strategy, Mr. Lawson sat composedly listening
while the Government prosecutor mis-stated the Law, and
while the Court relayed the mis-statement (to the effect that the
Harrison Act does not permit a physician to treat an addict hav-
ing no “other pathology,” and the allied Code-engendered
sophistries) in the Instructions to the jury. Then, when coimsel
were asked, as is the custom, to point out any modifications or
additional instructions they would wish to have introduced or
emphasized, Mr. Lawson sprang his surprise.
“Your Honor,” he said, “I have only one suggestion. I ask
you to charge the jury that the final issue here is the question of
whether my client acted in good faith in his dealing with this
patient. That, indeed, has already been stated. But now I ask
you to define ‘good faith.’ I ask you to charge that good faith,
on the part of a physician, consists solely and exclusively in the
intent, on the part of the physician, to benefit his patient. If my
client tried to injure the patient, he showed bad faith and is
guilty. If he tried to benefit the patient, he showed good faith,
and is innocent.”
The judge, taken by surprise, acquiesced, and gave this final
admonition to the jury — thus, probably for the first time in the
history of many hundreds of similar cases, presenting a defini-
tion of “good faith” that any one can understand and that no
one can dispute.
The jury, with that definition of good faith in their ears as
the final message of the Court, virtually forgot all antecedent
testimony and argument. Five minutes’ discussion proved
them agreed that the physician certainly had not designed to
injure the patient when he prescribed the only medicine that
could keep the patient alive and sane. (It was in evidence that
this patient had subsequently died for lack^ of morphine in a
Boston hospital. It was also effectively in evidence that the
Government, employing the patient as a stool pigeon, supplied
Three Kecent Episodes 233
him morphine day by day in lieu of that prescribed by the
physician,) Obviously, then, the physician had intended to
benefit the patient, when he prescribed the all-essential medi-
cine — the only medicine that could benefit him.
So all the obfuscations of the testimony cleared away. The
evidence as a whole, along with argument and legal quibblings,
could be set aside and forgotten. The clean-cut issue of good
faith, simply and logically defined, was all that need be con-
sidered. And as to that, there was no possible chance for dif-
ference of opinion. The Government had not even suggested
that the physician had any design to injure the patient. The
medicine prescribed, far from being injurious, was life-saving.
Ergo, good faith — the only issue — ^had been demonstrated to
the hilt.
Quickly the jury returned to court, with the verdict of “not
guilty.” Home-spun logic had saved the day, where direct chal-
lenge of the mis-statements of the Prosecution would have been
meaningless to the jury, and utterly futile.
Now a concluding word. Of the three trials here sum-
marized, one took place in Seattle, Washington; the second, in
Atlanta, Georgia; the third, in Los Angeles, California. The
fact of identity of plan of action illustrates the universality of
the stereotyped method originated and generaled in Washing-
ton. The two typical cases illustrate the helplessness of local
2jfQj"u,cys (necessarily unpracticed in such cases) when pitted
against Government officials who have the benefit of the ex-
perience of hundreds of cases, relayed from Washington, and
who need only follow routine in order to put the defense en-
tirely at their mercy.
The third episode, on the other hand, shows that the Govern-
ment strategy is not invincible. In this case it was foiled by a
simple stratagem, which might be expected to work in allied
cases. After all, we may not suppose that the average jury
A
234 Drug Addicts Are Human Beings
wishes to be a party to gross injustice. It is the business of the
Government prosecutor to win his case, by fair means or foul ;
and the Court instinctively sides with the “Government. But
the average juror, we must believe, would prefer to feel that he
has been just and honest in his decisions. His difl&culty is that
he cannot comprehend, even in a general way, the import of
these strange narcotics cases.
Wherefore it may safely be assumed that most juries would
welcome, as the jury of our third episode did, such a brain-
clarifying expedient as Mr, Lawson’s homely definition of the
much-mooted but hitherto unexplained “good faith” of a phy-
sician in his relations with his patients.
Chapter XXXVI
One Judge ^eads the X>aw
A REPORT of the Narcotics Commissioner, in designat-
ing alleged derelictions of physicians, refers to purchases
of narcotics apparently “excessive or otherwise open to suspi-
cion,” and to “improper practices” in connection therewith, and
to the “improper sale or dispensing of narcotics ” We have
gained a general idea as to what these terms implied. Let us
now examine them more specifically. The very crux of the
narcotics imbroglio is involved.
Let it be understood, then, that, so far as physicians are con-
cerned, the “improper sale or dispensing of narcotics” means
one thing only — the writing of a prescription (usually for mor-
phine) for a narcotic addict, who (it is or will be alleged by the
Government) does not require the drug, in the quantity pre-
scribed, for any malady other than addiction.
Now it cannot be too often reiterated that the Harrison Law
makes no mention of addiction, nor of any other disease, and
puts no restriction on the physician in his treatment of patients
of any type. Therefore the prescribing of morphine for an
addict, in any needed quantity, to relieve conditions solely in-
cident to his addiction, is not an “improper practice” under the
law, but an entirely legal and proper practice.
This must be self-evident to any one who understands Eng-
lish and reads the law, but we may fortify the conclusion by
citing authoritative decisions. First, the Supreme Court, in the
Linder case; a decision rendered July 2, 1925:
335
236 Drug Addicts Are Human Beings
The Harrison Law “says nothing of ‘addicts’ and does not undertake
to prescribe methods for their medical treatment. They are diseased
and proper subjects for such treatment . .
In the Boyd case, 1926, the Supreme Court quoted with ap-
proval the charge of a lower court to the effect that “it was ad-
missible for the defendant in his professional practice to pre-
scribe the drug either for ‘the curing of morphinism’ or for ‘the
relief of suffering from morphinism,’ if he did so in good
faith.” Later a decision in the Strader case (Circuit Court)
sustains this thesis, but in so doing displays also strangely
anachronistic astigmatism of judgment, in seeming to recog-
nize, by implication, the legality of the famous “regulations”
issued by the Internal Revenue Bureau:
“The statute does not prescribe the disease for which morphine may
be supplied. Regulation 85 issued under its provisions forbids the giv-
ing of a prescription to an addict or habitual user of narcotics, not in
the course of professional treatment, but for the purpose of providing
him with a sufficient quantity to keep him comfortable by maintaining
his customary use. Neither the statute nor the regulation precludes a
physician from giving an addict a moderate amount of drugs in order
to relieve a condition incident to addiction, if the physician acts in good
faith and in accord with fair medical standards.”
Here the Court blows hot and cold at one breath, illustrating
the difficulty encountered by even the most authoritative legal
minds in grasping the fact that statutes made by the Congress
and “regulations” (later known as Codes) made by a tax
bureau are not of one ilk.
But a clear comprehension of this grammar-school truth came
to the entire Court a little later, and found expression in the
famous N. R. A. decision, which declared Bureau-regulations,
or Codes, unconstitutional.
Then came the A. A. A. decision of January 6, 1936, already
several times cited, in which the explicit declaration was made
that the Federal Government has no power to “regulate the
237
One fudge Reads the Law
practice of a profession”; from which it may be deduced, with-
out imdue strain on the logical faculties, that unconstitutional
Codes cannot dictate to a physician the manner of treatment of
his patients.
Before the Supreme Court came finally to these definitive
pronouncements, however, a strange thing had happened. By
rare and notable exception, a certain Federal District judge had
read the Harrison Act and made for himself a simple and
cogent interpretation of its meaning.
This extraordinary result was attained by reading the single
sentence of the Harrison Act that refers to the subject, and as-
suming — as apparently no other magistrate had done during the
twenty years since the statute was enacted — that the words
meant just what they said.
The salient part of the single sentence in question is this:
“Nothing in this section shall apply to dispensing or distribution of
any of the aforesaid drugs to a patient by a physician — in the course of
his professional practice only.”
That simple negative sentence is all of the Harrison Act, inso-
far as the professional activities of physicians are concerned.
On that basis alone, the “regulations” of the Internal Revenue
Bureau declare that a physician may not: (a) alleviate the suf-
fering due to drug addiction disease under any circumstances;
nor (b) attempt to save the life of such a sufferer unless he is
very old; nor (c) attempt to cure the disease unless the patient
is under forcible confinement; nor (d) extend the narcotic treat-
ment beyond thirty days, even with the patient in an institution
under confinement; nor (e) administer morphine to a sufferer
from cancer, late tuberculosis, tabes, or other incurable painful
malady, except in minimum quantity to control the pains due
to these maladies, without controlling the pains due to addic-
tion disease; nor (f) under any circumstances dispense enough
narcotic to last a cancer case or other incurable more than one
238 Drug Addicts Are Human Beings
week, and even then only under carefully prescribed conditions
(which would often be impossible of fulfillment in case, for
example of a patient residing in the country, far from medical
aid).
In a word, the entire machinery of the Blackmail Code was
developed as a pretended interpretation of the simple sentence
of the Harrison Act above quoted.
And for twenty years, the blackmailers “got away with it.”
As already noted, it was ten full years before a majority of
members even of the Supreme Court were induced to read the
Law instead of the Code; and after that, they were sometimes
more or less myopic. And as to Federal judges in general, they
never dreamed of questioning the full legality of an “interpreta-
tion” that a child of eight would have pronounced “simply
foolish.”
All this you must bear in mind, in order to appreciate the
iconoclastic action of the Justice of the District Court at Seattle,
Washington, who on October 13, 1934, made judicial history by
interpreting the Harrison Act, not in terms of the Blackmail
Code, but in terms of the Law itself.
The name of this iconoclast — I acclaim it for high honor — is
Judge John C. Bowen. The memorable interpretation, which
substituted law for code, in advance of the N. R. A. decision,
was made in the course of Instructions to the jury in a case in
which a physician was on trial for alleged violation of the
Harrison Act — the alleged violation consisting in the admini-
stration of morphine to an addict patient, by hypodermic in-
jection, on seven successive occasions (about fifteen grains
daily).
The indictment was of course the usual one, based on the
Code, with the conventional claim that the morphine was not
administered in the course of professional practice only, nor in
good faith, nor for legitimate medical purposes.
239
One Judge Reads the Law
The usual stool pigeon had been used to endeavor to entrap
the physician, and to give testimony to order.
When the case went to trial, October 8, 1934, the chances
were, statistically stated, 95.75 to 4.25 against the physician. In
other words, he had about one chance in twenty-five of escap-
ing conviction.
Had his lot been cast in Los Angeles, where as it happened a
notable narcotics case of similar character was opened on the
same day, his chance might better have been reckoned at one in
a thousand — for there the Code was still doing service for Law,
and judicial decisions were being rendered that outcoded the
code itself.
I shall quote a few salient paragraphs from Judge Bowen’s
remarkable pronouncement. Every physician and every lawyer
who opens this book should read these paragraphs, if nothing
else in the volume, with careful attention.
The message they convey gives augury of the restoration of
Law and the termination of the baleful era of the Blackmail
Code.
Judge Bowen; “I instruct you that the word ‘patient’ means one who
applies to a physician for the alleviation of pain or disease.
“Drug addiction is a disease and a physician has a right to treat drug
addiction just as he has a right to treat any other disease, and whatever
hypodermic injections he believes to be necessary for the treatment of
the habit, he can give and under that condition he is responsible to
no one. , i . r
“Morphine addicts are diseased and proper subjects tor treatment,
and if the defendant believed that it was beneficial to said Stimpson to
give the hypodermic injection of morphine, the defendant was entitled
to do so and was guilty of no violation of law.
“If the defendant gave the morphine injection to the witness Stimpson
for the purpose of relieving pain, he would not be guilty and your
verdict could find him not guilty.
“If the defendant knew that the witness Stimpson was a narcotic ad-
dict the defendant, in the course of his professional practice only, had a
legal right to give hypodermic injections to said witness for the pur-
240 Drug Addicts Are Human Beings
pose of relieving any suffering that he had as a result of his addiction
to morphine.
“If the defendant in his judgment believed that it was the proper
thing to do either for the purpose of curing the addict or for relieving
pain to give the hypodermic injection then he had a right to give the
hypodermic injection and he would be guilty of no crime.
“If the defendant as a physician using his best judgment gave the
hypodermic injection described in the indictment, and you should fur-
ther find, beyond a reasonable doubt, from the evidence, that he was
mistaken in so doing or that his judgment was bad or that he acted
as an incompetent physician in so doing, then you would still have to
find the defendant not guilty.
“I instruct you that the defendant in injecting morphine into the
witness Stimpson was responsible for nothing except his own honest
judgment as a physician, and the mere fact that his judgment may have
been bad, or that some other medical practitioner would not have done
the same thing does not permit you to find him guilty for such lack of
judgment.
“I instruct you that the Act under which the defendant is charged
(The Harrison Act) is a Revenue Measure, and that the thing done,
alleged to be a violation of the Act, must be such a thing as to interfere
with the collection of revenue.
“The term “For legitimate medical purposes” means, in these instruc-
tions, among other things, to cause relief from disease, pain, or suffer-
ing, and it is the duty of a physician to relieve the pain and suffering of
his patient when such relief can be effected by the use of morphine in
quantity proportionate to the needs of such patient.
“If in this case the defendant administered in the course of his pro-
fessional practice to his patient, as I have defined the term to you,
morphine, and used the application of his skill and learning and his
best professional judgment as to the amount of morphine then required
by his patient, he should be by you acquitted, even though in your
judgment or the judgment of other members of the medical profession
the defendant may have been in error, either in regard to the needs of
his patient or the diagnosis of the disease from which said patient
suffered.
“Even though a patient may be addicted to the habitual use of mor-
phine, this does not prohibit or prevent a regularly licensed and regis-
tered physician from administering morphine to such patient, if, in the
judgment of the physician, the amount administered is proportionate to
the needs of such patient, and such administration of such morphine is
for a legitimate medical purpose in the professional practice of the
physician.
i
241
One Judge Reads the Law
“In this case there is a presumption that the defendant as a physician
was acting in the course of his practice as a doctor, and that he was
prescribing morphine for a legitimate purpose, and before this presump-
tion could be overcome you must be satisfied by competent evidence to
the contrary beyond any reasonable doubt.”
Thus, paragraph by paragraph was presented — ^so far as I
am aware for the first time in the long double-decade since the
statute was enacted — a rational interpretation of the famous
Harrison Narcotic Law.
At last a jurist had been found who could read a simple
sentence of the English language, and accept the simple and
obvious meaning of the words.
“I instruct you that the word ‘patient’ means one who applies
to a physician for the alleviation of pain or disease. Drug addic-
tion is a disease and a physician has a right to treat drug addic-
tion just as he has a right to treat any other disease, and what-
ever hypodermics he believes to be necessary for the treatment
of the habit, he can give, and under that condition he is re-
sponsible to nobody.”
Responsible to nobody? Not even to the narcotics agent,
who may come to suggest a “commensurate sum” by way of
“compromise” for the offense of giving different treatment
from what that layman thinks should have been given ? No,
as to that point, even. Judge Bowen gives explicit decision:
“If the defendant as a physician using his best judgment gave
the hypodermic described in the indictment, and you should
further find, beyond a reasonable doubt, from the evidence, that
he was mistaken in so doing or that his judgment was bad or
that he acted as an incompetent physician in so doing, then you
would still have to find the defendant not guilty!*
Nothing said about “compromise” or the payment of “com-
mensurate sums of money,” you observe.
No suggestion of blackmail-tribute as an alternative to prose-
cution.
242
Drug Addicts Are Human Beings
Nothing said about “excessive quantities” of the drug, nor
about “improper practices” for which tribute must be paid.
On the contrary, the explicit assurance that the physician is
the sole judge as to the quantity of the drug that may be re-
quired, and that even though his “practices” may be contrary to
the opinions of other physicians, or his judgment bad, he is still
guiltless of any crime and responsible to no one.
But what, then, becomes of the Blackmail formula? How
can the narcotic agent browbeat the physician and demand
tribute as the alternative to prosecution, if the agent is not
permitted to challenge the physician’s judgment and question
his “practices”? On what ground can the would-be black-
mailer base his charge, if it be granted that any one “who ap-
plies to a physician for the alleviation of pain or disease” is a
patient, and that drug addiction itself is a disease that the phy-
sician has a perfect right to treat “just as he has a right to treat
any other disease?”
It will be a sorry day for the official blackmailer and for his
coadjutor the dope peddler when, following the Supreme Court
and Judge Bowen, magistrates in general come to understand
that the Harrison Law cannot be legally interpreted in terms of
the Blackmail Code, but must be accepted for what its pro-
ponents intended it to be — ^a plan to put the administration and
distribution of narcotics in the hands of physicians, who alone
have education, training, and experience that gives them com-
petency for the beneficent task.
Then the Blackmail Code will cease to exist, except as a
weird historical document — an obsolete token of the very
strangest era of popular delusion and Governmental persecu-
tion in the entire range of American history.
Chapter XXXVII
Hall of Justice
A T THE very hour when Judge Bowen was making his
^ iconoclastic interpretations of the Harrison Act at Seattle,
a memorable trial involving the chief physician of the Los
Angeles Narcotic Clinic was under way in a Federal court of
the California city. Almost coincidently, in another court at
Los Angeles, another physician, who had been called in to
treat Clinic patients after his colleagues had been arrested, was
also on trial. He had found it impossible to continue the work,
with a Federal narcotics agent (a layman, of course) at his
elbow literally dictating the dosage of morphine that the phy-
sician should prescribe.
The physician, Dr. Edward H. Anthony, therefore withdrew;
and the narcotics agent told the patients to shift for themselves
— which meant simply that they must go to the dope peddler if
they were to receive the drug which (by appraisal of at least
two skilled hospital physicians) they imperatively needed, to
keep them in anything like normal condition of body or mind.
Dr. Anthony, yielding to the importunities of three or four
of the Clinic patients whose condition was particularly pitiable,
continued to prescribe for them at his private office. For so
doing, he was promptly arrested. The indictment was the
stereotyped one charging violation of the Harrison Act in pre-
scribing narcotics; coupled with a charge of Conspiracy, which
involved also the patients who received the prescriptions and
the druggist who filled them.
The trials of the two Clinic physicians, though before dif-
243
244 Drug Addicts Are Human Beings
ferent judges, were conducted along the same lines — the con-
ventional, standardized lines that had been followed in thou-
sands of similar cases during the fourteen-year sway of the Nar-
cotics Code.
Up to this time. Federal courts in general accepted the Regula-
tions (Code) of the Narcotics Bureau (originally the Prohibi-
tion Bureau) as law, and it was customary to introduce medical
witnesses galore, and to flood the court room with medical
jargon quite meaningless to counsel, Court, and jury.
The smoke screen of words having accomplished its purpose,
the befuddled jurors could be depended on to convict, or at
least to bring compromise verdicts, on the theory that where
there was so much smoke there must be some fire.
Statistically, of the physicians arraigned in Federal courts on
charge of violation of the Harrison Act, in the year 1934 (an
average year), 95.75 per cent were convicted.
Dr. Anthony’s case, however, for some unexplained reason,
failed to follow precedent. By a strange fluke, his jury did not
convict, — though eleven men wanted to.
These eleven could see plainly enough that the prescribing of
medicine for sick people, to relieve their great distress and per-
haps save their lives, is an obvious felony.
But one juror, by strange exception, could not see the point.
Possibly he recalled occasions when he had suffered an injury,
or agonized with a kidney stone, or what not, and had been
given a pain-quelling dose of the drug which the physician had
prescribed for the sufferers who had been unwillingly paraded
on the witness stand. He could not quite see how the doctor
who saved him from agony had thereby committed a felony.
And he so stated to the eleven associates who, under the hyp-
notic spell of the prosecuting attorney, were clamoring for the
pound of flesh.
In simple but emphatic language he announced that he
245
Hall of Justice
would sit there till Hell froze over before he would convict a
physician for solacing a sick man’s agony by giving him medi-
cine.
And as he evidently meant it, and that seemed a long time to
wait, the eleven would-be Torquemadas renounced sadistic
satisfaction, and sent word to the judge that the jury could not
agree. In other words a hung jury.
That happened in October, 1934. Needless to say, the Fed-
eral prosecutor was not allowed to quash the indictment. The
case was kept on the docket. But further trial was postponed,
for a purpose — awaiting an appeal on another Clinic case.
And now, in the succeeding May, came the N. R. A. decision,
which told the world (or such part of it as had eyes to read)
that the famed Narcotics Code, which had dominated so many
thousands of illegal trials, culminating in so many thousand
illegal convictions, was null and void.
Then came the A. A. A. decision, in which the Supreme
Court cited its own decision (of 1925) in the Linder narcotics
case as illustrating the basic law that the Federal Government
cannot interfere with State jurisdiction over the practice of a
profession.
The days when those decisions were rendered were evil days
for the big business man of Los Angeles and his confreres of the
billion-dollar bankroll. They were evil days for his coadjutors.
They forecast the dissolution of the illicit drug racket and of the
Narcotics Bureau racket that is indissolubly linked with it.
But they were pleasant days for the victims of these rackets
not because of immediate effect, but because of the their hope-
ful augury. They were pleasant days for Dr. Anthony, who
now became urgent for the incidence of the second trial that
hung over his head. That trial, he now believed, could have
but one sequel — a sequel very different from the earlier one.
The Federal authorities were not anxious to have the matter
246 Drug Addicts Are Human Beings
put to a test. They saw the writing on the wall. But through
Dr. Anthony’s insistence the case was placed on the docket, and
scheduled for trial in June, 1936 — ^just two years after the pre-
scriptions were written that were the allegedly incriminating
documents named in the indictment.
Incidentally, it may surprise you to be told that it was with
difficulty that the physician forced the case into court, though
there was no thought on the part of the Government of quash-
ing the indictment.
A simple explanation is that the animus of the entire pro-
cedure was merely the intent to close the Clinic permanently
(or for as long a period as possible) in the interests of the dope
peddler; and nothing could serve this purpose better than keep-
ing physicians under indictment, without running the risk of
their acquittal by bringing them to trial.
The significance of this will be better understood if it is re-
lated that a newly appointed Federal Judge in Los Angeles had
rendered a decision in a minor narcotics case that set the
coadjutors of the dope peddler to thinking.
It was more than rumored that here was a Judge of excep-
tional acumen and undaunted courage, who was unhampered
by tradition and beyond the reach of political influence.
There were splendid men among the older Federal judges in
Los Angeles, but ample experience had shown that no one of
them clearly understood the difference between Law and Code;
and each of them could be depended on to fall into the con-
ventional Government traps, and conduct narcotics cases in the
stereotyped manner — ^with the Washington-approved prepon-
derant percentage of the convictions.
But what of this new incumbent. Judge Leon R. Yankwich ?
He had not hitherto been tested in a major narcotics case. The
Government forces decided that he could perhaps be handled
to best advantage and, so to say, broken to harness, if he were
247
Hcdl of Justice
worked on without a hampering jury. And the Anthony case
seemed a very good opener, because the physician (as above
related) had prescribed large quantities of morphine in defiance
of virtual commands of the highest Narcotics Bureau
authorities.
Dr. Anthony’s attorney, with an ace up his sleeve, consented
(with well-feigned reluctance) to have his client tried before
Judge Yankwich, without a jury. In reality, that was of all
things the one that he and Dr. Anthony most desired.
For their intent was to stake the issue fairly and squarely on
the Law.
They were resolved not to be drawn off on any of the custom-
ary herring-trails. They purposed a campaign of simple logic,
with none of the sophistries that decide matters for the average
juryman.
In a word, they intended to introduce a defense which, if not
absolutely novel, would be at least altogether unusual.
They designed to put forward the recent decisions of the
Supreme Court to sustain the theses that: (1) the Harrison Law
has no jurisdiction over the practice of medicine (Linder, Boyd,
Nigro, Strader, and A. A. A. decisions); and that (2) the
Narcotics Bureau Code (which pretends to dictate as to matters
of professional practice) has no status in law (N. R. A. de-
cision).
It was logically argued that if theses were accepted (and how
could they possibly be rejected .»^) the question as to what Dr.
Anthony had or had not done in the way of prescribing mor-
phine for addict patients could have no significance whatever.
If the constitutional plea were made at the outset, the case must
be dismissed, on the ground of no Federal jurisdiction. There
could be no doubt about that. But the attorney decided that a
more comprehensive and valuable decision might be evoked by
slightly modifying the strategy — ^to the extent of withholding
248 Drug Addicts Are Human Beings
the constitutional plea until the Government had put in its
entire case.
Then all the cards would be on the table, so to say; and the
decision (regarded as inevitable) would be overwhelming.
When the case came into court, June 16, 1936, the plan just
outlined was followed to the letter. The Government prose-
cutors must have been dumbfounded to see their best red her-
rings ignored, and the case held insistently to a consideration
of questions of Law, with no concessions to the Codified
sophistries that had resulted in disaster for thousands of physi-
cians in precisely similar cases in years gone by.
There had been nothing like this in their experience — or for
that matter in the experience, perhaps, of any Government
prosecutor in a major narcotics (Federal) case in the fifteen
years" tenure of the Blackmail Code that had done service as
“the Harrison Law.”
The Government attorneys stood to their guns and neglected
no artifice.
They introduced the usual pair of “expert” physicians, to
stroke their chins and stomachs and blatantly testify that they
regarded it as better to let half a milHon sick people die un-
solaced, rather than to give them medicine while they were not
under confinement.
They had the jailed patients there, of course, to show how
easy it is to keep a man from taking morphine while you have
him under lock and key. They cited the old court decisions
now sixteen years out of date, and tried to ignore the decisions
of the past decade.
In a word, they brought out the same old bag of discredited
tricks, and made the same shameless Pharisaical, dishonest,
hypocritical exhibit, which would be disgraceful in a police
court, and which dishonors the very name of a Federal hall of
“Justice.” The same old humiliating story.
249
Hall of Justice
But in a new setting. No fatuous jury to be bamboozled,
mystified, confused; but a clear-eyed Judge, to hold the argu-
ment relentlessly to matters of fact and of law — repudiating
absolutely every attempt to substitute the vulpine Code for the
simple (but irrelevant) Harrison Law.
There could, of course, be but one issue. Dr. Anthony was
acquitted, as a matter of course, on all counts.
His action in prescribing medicine for patients that bitterly
needed the medicine was commended, not by implication
merely, but explicitly.
And the words in which the decision was rendered constitute
perhaps the most comprehensive and at the same time the
clearest, most logical, and most impressive analysis of the Har-
rison Law, in its hearing on the activities of physicians, that has
ever come from the lips of a Federal Judge.
For the general reader, it perhaps suffices to summarize this
notable and epoch-marking decision with the statement that it
cites the Harrison Law for what its framers designed it to be:
quotes and interprets the major decisions of the Supreme Court
with unswerving logicality; and applies to the individual case
in hand the conclusion that Federal Law has no concern with
the practice of medicine, and, specifically, no power to dictate
to the physician as to the manner of treatment of addicts or
other patients, the dosage of morphine, or any other feature of
professional activity.
That logical, fearless decision marks the beginning of a new
era in the history of the administration of Federal Law in the
field of narcotics in America. It marks the beginning of the
end of the illicit drug racket.
The man who dared render that decision, in the very strong-
hold of one of the chief leaders of the Illicit drug ring, and in
the face of political influences that few others have ventured
to brave, must rank high in the company of incorruptible
250
Drug Addicts Are Human Beings
iconoclasts. Only those who know the true inwardness o£ the
narcotics situation can fully apprehend the measure of courage
that was required thus to defy the Powers That Be.
Hats off to Judge Leon R. Yankwich! May he soon have
many followers.
In another chapter, I shall analyze in detail this remarkable
decision, for the benefit in particular of medical and legal
readers, and as a fitting summary of the narcotics situation as
we have studied it.
Chapter XXXVIII
Judge Yan\wich Interprets the JC>aw
T his chapter, designed chiefly for lawyers and physicians,
should nevertheless be of interest to any reader who has
found the paradoxicalities of the narcotics situation thought-
provocative. The decision about to be analyzed was sum-
marized in the preceding chapter. But in the present more ex-
tended summary and analysis, we shall have occasion to touch
on some aspects of the subject not there presented, and even
to refer to certain matters (such as the dosage of morphine, the
constitutionality of the Harrison Law, etc.) that have scarcely
been referred to previously in our text.
In the main, however, the present exposition will have the
effect of a recapitulation and summary, rather than a new
thesis; with added value, however, incident to its origin.
We are dealing with decisions of the Supreme Court as
interpreted by a fair-minded and fearless Federal magistrate.
We must understand at the outset that the case under con-
sideration has peculiar importance because of the large
quantities of the narcotic drug, morphine sulphate, prescribed
for the addict patients, four in number.
The indictments against Dr. Anthony, containing sixteen
counts (with aggregate possible penalty of 80 years’ imprison-
ment!), specified prescriptions for four addict patients, calling
for upward of twelve grains a day for each patient, with an
aggregate of about 1,612 grains during the period of about six
weeks. The patients were all ambulatory.
Treatment was discontinued only when the patients were
252
Drug Addicts Are Human Beings
arrested and sent to jail; where they were of course “cured” of
the drug habit in the usual manner. To complete the formula,
each patient was presently indicted, jointly with the physician,
for “Conspiracy” — their crime being that they secured the
medicine they needed by having the prescriptions filled at a
drug store.
(It should be interpolated that the first judge before whom
the case was tried dismissed these conspiracy charges, along
with similar charges against the druggist. After the first trial
— terminating, it will be recalled, with a hung jury — the pa-
tients were discharged from jail, and of course reverted
promptly to the use of morphine; — ^which was quite all right,
since they could now get no physician to prescribe for them, and
so perforce patronized the dope peddler. As time for the
second trial approached, the patients were again jailed; once
more “cured,” and held as material witnesses. Everything pre-
cisely according to formula.)
Here, then, was a case exactly duplicating several thousand
others in which convictions had been attained for “violation of
the Harrison Law.” If a phonograph record had been made
of the prosecution-charges and court procedure of any one of
hundreds of other cases, this might have been reproduced in
court to save lung power of a prosecuting attorney.
It might even be noted that two of the patients had appeared
in the same witness-capacity in another Los Angeles Federal
court a few months before, to give testimony (much against
their will) against another physician who had treated them
precisely as Dr. Anthony did — only with somewhat smaller
dosage of morphine; — and this other physician had been con-
victed and given a yea/s prison sentence, without parole.
A perfect case, you see, from the “Government’s” standpoint.
Prescriptions in hand, in alluring profusion, calling for 1,612
grains — ^not far from four ounces — of the deadly morphine; —
253
Judge Yan\wich Interprets the haw
enough to make upward of 12,896 average or ordinary doses.
Can you see the jury fairly staggered by the evidence of such
reckless depravity?
Can you hear the quaver in the Government attorney’s voice
as he whispers the words that are almost too terrifying to be
said aloud ?
The case is as good as closed. The physician may as well
pack up and prepare for the trip to the penitentiary.
Ah, but we forget. There is no jury present, to respond
popeyed to these heroics. There is only a sane judge up there
on the bench, who sees nothing in the least alarming in the fact
that some sick people received medicine that they imperatively
needed, in such doses as they manifestly required.
Twelve thousand “ordinary” doses?
Yes; but what have ordinary doses of morphine to do with
the treatment of a patient whose malady involves habituation
and tolerance for morphine in doses extraordinary? That is
the essential characteristic of addiction disease. The patient
who once would have felt the effect of an eighth-grain dose of
the drug now requires doses of three or four grains, and several
of them every day.
An “ordinary” or “average” dose for an addict of long stand-
ing is well konwn to be ten grains a day, or fifteen grains; not
infrequently twice or three times the larger amount; sometimes
fifty grains, seventy-five, even a hundred grains. At least one
case is authentic that required 240 grains a day.
This individual alone would have consumed the entire 1,612
grains that Dr. Anthony prescribed in a single week.
And what of that? What possible difference does it make,
in any legal or moral sense, whether the amount of drug con-
sumed be one-eighth of a grain or 240 grains? There arc
practical differences, obviously — differences of cost and of con-
venience of administration.
254 Drug Addicts Are Human Beings
But does it morally or legally matter whether you smoke
three cigarettes a day or thirty ?
The same answer for morphine — which has no more to do
with morals, in any event, than has nicotine; and much less to
do with health than nicotine; and a hundred times less to do
with either health or morals than alcohol.
And as to the matter of Law — the Harrison Law in par-
ticular; the dosage of morphine given a patient by a physician
has no more to do with that than with the number of cigarettes
you bought at the tobacco store this morning.
The United States attorney knew that, of course. But he
thought it was a secret known only to the Government. What
was his amazement, then, to discover that Judge Yankwich —
one magistrate in a hundred — also knew the law.
The prosecutor had made the usually effective argument
(with tongue in cheek) that, even if the physician was entitled
to prescribe for the patients, the Harrison Act did not permit
him to prescribe such quantities.
And this was Judge Yankwich’s response:
“The Linder case also lays down the rule which, to my mind, is very
clear and is made clearer by subsequent cases which have interpreted
it, — that the Act does not attempt to tell how much a physician may
prescribe to an addict. We must bear in mind in reading the Linder
case that the Court there was not passing upon a case after trial.
Court was merely dealing with the sufficiency of an indictment which
charged one delivery to a person and did not even charge sale. So that
what the Court said about four grains or about a moderate amount,
must be interpreted in the light of that fact. In fact, its own language,
in interpreting the Webb case, intimates that it does not intend to de-
limit either the quantity or frequency with which a physician in his
practice may prescribe. Such an attempt would make the Court the
arbiter of the practice of medicine. —
“I am satisfied, therefore, that the Linder case and the cases which
interpret it, lay down the rule definitely that the statute does not say
what a physician may prescribe to an addict. Nor does it say the quan-
tity which a physician may or may not prescribe. Nor does it regulate
255
Judge Yan\wich Interprets the Law
the frequency of prescription. Any attempt to so interpret the statute,
by an administrative interpretation, whether that administrative interpre-
tation be oral, in writing, or by an o£&cer or by a regulation (Code) of
the department, would be not only contrary to the law, but would
make the law unconstitutional as it would be clearly a regulation of the
practice of medicine.”
Need any comment be added to that searching, logical, com-
mon-sense, definitive, yet revolutionary deduction ? Only a few
words of congratulation that a second judge has been found to
supplement and round out Judge Bowen’s masterly analysis by
giving universal application to rulings of the Supreme Court
which, because they dealt with the specific conditions of a re-
stricted case, have been perpetually misinterpreted.
It is true that no candid and logical mind ever questioned the
import of the Linder decision (in fully rounded meaning), but
neither candor nor logic prevail in the usual court-room presen-
tation of a narcotics case. So Judge Yankwich’s analysis consti-
tutes a service inestimable.
This decision checkmates in advance the ruse of any Prose-
cuting attorney who in future has the hardihood to resort to the
old trick of blatantly harping on the question of dosage of a
narcotic drug as administered to an addict by his physician.
For the matter of that, however, it is not merely the question
of dosage of the drug that is set at rest by this remarkable de-
cision. Even the quotation just given, it will be noted, referred
to matters of wider import. For full understanding, we must
turn to other parts of the message.
At the outset, it is noted that there has been question as to the
constitutionality of the Harrison Act itself. When the Supreme
Court appraised the law as constitutional, there were four dis-
senting justices, including Chief Justice Taft. Let it be noted,
however, that the difference of opinion rested solely on diverse
views of the meaning of the law, as worded. Says Judge Yank-
wich:
256
Drug Addicts Are Human Beings
“A majority of the Court sustained the Act upon the ground that it
is not an invasion of the province of the State; that it is a revenue
measure only and that the moral ends of the statute are incidental Y*
Mr. Chief Justice Taft, Justices McKenna, Van Devanter, and Mc-
Reynolds expressed the view, to ivhich they have adhered, that the Art
was not a revenue act, was an invasion of the province of the States, an
was, therefore, unconstitutional. ,
“I merely am referring to these facts,” Judge Yankwich continues, in
order to indicate that we must bear in mind the import of the Ac^
that the Act is a borderline statute which must be interpreted in ^
manner as to bring it within the constitutional power. And if we de-
part from it and interpret it either as attempting to regulate the disposi-
tion and sale of narcotics or attempting the regulation of medicine, we
extend the Act to the realm which the Supreme Court has repeatedly
said the Federal Government cannot enter, under penalty of unconstitu-
tionality. . . . The moment we assume that this Act regulates the sale
within the State of narcotics and that it aims to regulate the practice of
medicine we must hold it unconstitutional.”
In citing this vital conclusion, Judge Yankwich is not merely
stating a personal opinion, of course; he is summarizing ver-
dicts of the Supreme Court, on a matter regarding the substance
of which there has never been difference of opinion.
In support of this view, there is further quotation from the de-
cision in the Linder case, in which Mr. Justice McReynolds
spoke for the undivided Court:
“Obviously, direct control of medical practice in the States is beyond
the power of the Federal Government. Incidental regulation of such
practice by Congress through a taxing act cannot extend to matters
plainly inappropriate and unnecessary to reasonable enforcement or a
revenue measure . . The Harrison Act “says nothing of ‘addicts
and does not undertake to prescribe methods for their medical treatment.
They are diseased and proper subjects for such treatment . . .
Again, a decision of the Supreme Court in the Bohrman case
(1922) is cited, as follows:
“ . The opinion cannot be accepted as authority for holding that
a physician, who acts bona fide and according to fair medical standards,
may never give an addict moderate amounts of drugs for self admmistra-
257
Judge Yan\wich Interprets the Law
tion in order to relieve conditions incident to addiction. Enforcement
of the tax demands no such drastic rule, and if the Act had such scope
it would certainly encounter grave constitutional difficulties.
“ ‘The Narcotic Law is essentially a revenue measure and its provi-
sions must be reasonably applied with the primary view of enforcing
the special tax.’
In a subsequent case, Nigro v. United States (1928) 276 U. S.
332, Mr. Justice Taft, writing the opinion for the Court, in an-
swering certain certified questions by the Eighth Circuit Court
of Appeals, came back to the subject of interpretation of the Act,
saying at page 341 :
“ ‘In interpreting the Act, we must assume that it is a taxing measure,
for otherwise it would be no law at all. If it is a mere act for the pur-
pose of regulating and restraining the purchase of opiates and other
drugs, it is beyond the power of Congress and must be regarded as in-
valid . .
“So we have in these cases,” Judge Yankwich concludes, “the
two limitations which the Court has placed upon the Act — two
statements which hold the Act must not be interpreted as en-
deavoring to regulate the local sale of drugs, or as an attempt
upon the part of the Federal Government to regulate the prac-
tice of medicine.”
Other cases cited in substantiation of the same view, each
making approach from a slightly different angle, are the Boyd
case of 1926, the Strader case of 1934, and the DuVall case of
1936.
Thus (even without mention of the AAA decision, which
confirmed the Linder decision), we have a series of Supreme
Court verdicts ranging from 1919 to 1936, in which it is
declared and reiterated, with no dissenting opinion, that the
Harrison Act was and is a pure revenue measure, having neither
purpose nor power to regulate the practice of the profession of
medicine.
During that period of seventeen years, this same Harrison Act
258 Drug Addicts Are Human Beings
has been invoked thousands of times in Federal Courts, and ar-
dently advanced and defended as having precisely the power
which the Supreme Court denied it.
And the record of ninety-five convictions in every hundred
attests the humiliating — the dumbfounding — ^fact that only
here and there, and by rare exception, a Federal judge has been
found who had the knowledge, the sense of justice, or the cour-
age to recognize the authority of the Supreme Court of the
United States as greater than that of the handlers of the billion-
dollar bankroll.
Chapter XXXIX
T^he Reason Why
A STRANGE recital, this story of varied aspects of the
narcotics situation in America, as we have followed it.
As to the factual structure, there is, I believe, small opportunity
for challenge or rebuttal. But at many stages there must have
arisen questions as to the motives that can conceivably have led
men of presumptive sanity and probity to become parties to
transactions so bizarre as to appear to have no point of contact
with rationality — and to lie far afield from justice or even hon-
esty.
On occasion, our narrative has revealed, or attempted to re-
veal, motives of unequivocal character — or rather, plain motives
of very equivocal character. At other times, the bald facts
have been presented, with no obvious attempt at elucidation.
It remains now, here at the end, to glance back and attempt a
summary, in the light of all the knowledge that our investiga-
tion makes available.
At the outset, let it be emphatically stated that there is no
question of a master-villain who in the beginning planned this
bizarre situation. Something as to that was said in early chap-
ters, where we dealt with fanatics ratlier than Pharisees. No
human imagination could have conceived in advance the
strange divagations of improbability that were to become reali-
ties.
We may assume, without great stress on the probabilities, that
at the outset, back in 1914, when the Harrison Act became Fed-
eral law, all persons concerned had the best of motives, and de-
sired to produce a beneficent statute.
259
A
26 o
Drug Addicts Are Human Beings
If the patent medicine lobbyists find place doubtfully under
this mantle of charity, such dubeity is unimportant, for that
phase of the situation has had no great significance in any event.
Nor, indeed, does it greatly matter what the proponents of the
central theses of the Harrison Act intended, since, as we have
seen, that Act, after being placed on the statute books, virtually
ceased to have any significance, being totally disregarded from
the outset.
The significant thing, as we have been told over and over, was
the set of “regulations” to which we have given the name
“Blackmail Code,” the essential feature of which ran exactly
counter to the text and import of the law that was supposed to
be interpreted.
The Law put the entire handling of narcotic drugs into the
hands of physicians. The Code denied the physician any voice
in the use of narcotics for treatment of the particular type of
patients believed to be in the minds of the law-makers.
And in that denial, as we have seen, lay the germs of the en-
tire bizarre development. The entire tragedy, with its legal,
medical, and economic bearings, lay engermed in the simple
order which forbade physicians to treat ambulatory patients
suffering from addiction disease.
Of course the order itself did not use any such phrase as “ad-
diction disease.” It did not contemplate the existence of any
such disease. It was couched in terms of the assumption that
drug addiction is a vicious voluntary habit; that the “craving
for drugs is a monstrous and willful obsession, veritably malig-
nant and little less than criminal. Coupled with this mistaken
notion was the further obsession, on the part of the makers of
the Code, that it should be relatively easy to control the supply
of narcotic drugs, and make them unavailable for the addict- —
who would then be automatically “cured” of his “habit.”
It would be time wasted to argue with anyone who holds to
The Reason Why
261
either of these delusions at this late day. But it is of interest to
recall that the Narcotics Commissioner, who has dominated the
situation since 1930, does not entertain these delusions. His
own utterances give assurance that he understands that (a) the
supply of narcotics has not been shut off, and (b) the addict is
not “cured” of addiction by incarceration for any limited period.
Which brings us face to face with the question of Motives,
our theme of the moment. Specifically, our question is this:
What motive actuates the Commissioner of Narcotics in his per-
ennial antagonism toward members of the medical profession
who attempt, either as individuals or collectively, to assuage the
ills of narcotic addicts; to relieve their suffering; to restore them
to a condition of self-respect and usefulness ?
Putting the same question in different terms, Why does the
Commissioner use every influence to prevent the rehabilitation
of sick addicts, and to keep them in the clutches of the dope
peddler ? Why does he, in effecting that end, resort to methods
that can only be described as persecutionary; and which at the
same time are illegal, indeed unconstitutional, as appraised by
the Supreme Court ?
It is needless here to enter into details. Entire chapters of the
book have been devoted to such elucidation. We are here con-
cerned only with the motivation of the strange activities.
Many times I have attempted to answer the question by as-
suming that the Commissioner is actuated by an infantile guile-
lessness, on a foundation of profound fanaticism. But when
the evidence is scanned, such an hypothesis appears to be very
doubtfully tenable. But our text supplies documentation from
which the reader may form his own hypothesis. Whatever the
motive, the results are deplorable, as we have seen.
The Narcotics Bureau, in its campaign against physicians,
would be virtually powerless without the cooperation of the
Department of Justice, as represented by United States Attor-
262
Drug Addicts Are Human Beings
neys and Federal District Judges. We have seen a good deal of
their activities. What motivates those activities ?
For the most part, the answer is to be found, I believe, in the
mental makeup of the lawyer, whether acting at the bar or on
the bench — z. judge being, of course, merely a lawyer who has
been promoted, with no radical change of outlook, and only
slighdy modified viewpoint.
Both prosecutor and judge regard themselves as component
parts of the “Government,” and instinctively ally themselves
against any defendant who has been brought to their attention
in an unfavorable light by another department of the “Govern-
ment.”
And such is the situation of any physician who is turned over
to the officers of the Department of Justice by the officials of the
Narcotics Bureau. By hypothesis, physicians who have been ac-
cused, but whose alleged malfeasance is of minor character, will
be permitted to “compromise,” without being reported for trial
in court. In other words, any physician who is reported to the
prosecuting attorney has been adjudged guilty by the Narcotics
officials.
The alleged “presumption of innocence until guilt is proved’
is, in any event, an obvious sophistication. In this case, it is not
even a pretence.
The defendant is assumed to be guilty, and the case is pre-
sented to the grand jury in such guise as to leave that body no
option but to indict.
What can the grand jurors know about the narcotics law?
How can they appraise a case where there is no dispute as to any
matter of fact? How are they to suspect that the writing of
what seems an ordinary prescription is a felonious procedure,
except as the Attorney so informs them? The whole business
is new to them.
The very wording of the indictment, a thousand times re-
The Reason Why 263
peated in Federal courts, is evidence of the grand jury’s igno-
rance of the entire situation.
The Federal judge, v^hen the case comes into the court, is
usually not much better informed.
Medical matters are involved of vi^hich he has not the most
elementary knowledge.
And, strange though it may seem, his grasp of the legal as-
pects of the matter may not be much more comprehensive.
The chances are about ten to one that His Honor will repose on
the authorities presented by the Prosecution, which in turn are
relayed from Washington — with sedulous omission of such rul-
ings of the Supreme Court as do not accord with the Washing-
ton viewpoint.
It may seem incredible, but I have myself listened to a sum-
ming up by a Federal judge, purporting to interpret the Harri-
son Law, in which no Supreme Court citation less than ten
years old was introduced — the definitive rulings of 1925 and
subsequent years (Linder case, Boyd case, Nigro case, etc.) be-
ing utterly ignored.
And the motive for such partisan presentation.'^ Was there
unconscious prejudice, based on ignorance.? Was there uncon-
scious desire to stand well with the authorities at Washington .?
Was there failure to grasp the clear meaning of words, as ex-
posited by the Supreme Court ?
Did His Honor fail to understand that the Federal Govern-
ment “has no power to regulate the practice of a profession”
(Supreme Court in Linder case, reiterated in AAA decision,
etc.), and that therefore his court has no jurisdiction over the
matters that made up the chief bulk of the testimony at the
trial?
As I have listened, I have been of two minds — or many minds.
Some decisions seemed so unfair that one could not believe
them unbiassed.
264 Drug Addicts Are Human Beings
%
Some were so imbecile that one was ready to excuse every-
thing on the ground of sheer incompetency.
And some were of such character that the hypothesis of ‘ good
faith” on the part of the Court seemed absolutely untenable.
What then? Well, that question answers itself — for any one
who has read this book.
I will only add that such experience? prepare one to applaud,
with the enthusiasm of the unexpected, such decisions as those
of Judges John C. Bowen of Seattle and Leon R. Yankwich of
Los Angeles, with which the reader is familiar.
The rulings of these magistrates show that a knowledge of
the decisions of the Supreme Court in narcotics cases is filtering
down to the District courts. They augur a new era, in which
the District Court will no longer be an appanage of the Nar-
cotics Bureau.
When Federal judges in general come to comprehend the
meaning of the Harrison Law, as interpreted by the Supreme
Court, the day of the narcotics racketeer, unofficial and official,
will be near sundown. The billion-dollar bankroll will fade
away, and cease to be anything but an evil memory.
When will that time be? Well, two judges have learned to
read the law within eleven years after it was clearly stated by the
Supreme Court. Make your own calculation as to how long it
may take the others to fall in line. I am neither a prophet nor
the son of a prophet.
I admit that past experience does not justify optimism, and I
do not underrate the power of Superstition. Still, I can’t help
being heartened by that terse phrase of Justice Roberts, in
which, adverting to the Linder decision of ten years before, he
fortified that verdict with the memorable words :
“Federal law cannot regulate the practice of a profession.”
When that phrase has sunk into the minds of United States
Attorneys and Judges, there will be few indictments against
The Reason Why 265
physicians brought on the charge of prescribing medicine for
sick people; and Federal courts, when narcotics cases are in
question, will have been transformed from Star-Chambers to-
Halls of Justice.
It will be a notable and memorable transformation.
Chapter XL
Some Practical Suggestions
S INCE the time surely approaches when this medical subject
will be restored to medical hands, it is perhaps not inexpe-
dient to make a few practical suggestions, drawn from personal
experience, as to the handling of narcotic cases.
The best orientation is gained by thinking of addiction as a
deprivation disease, comparable to diabetes. The addict, like
the diabetic, is approximately normal in body and mind only
while there circulates in his blood a substance that the normal
body does not require to have administered from without.
Each requires a hypodermic injection every few hours in order
to experience' peace or comfort. In neither case is the injection
curative; but that fact does not make it the less essential.
As to curability, there is not much to choose; but the slight
advantage lies with addiepon, if not of too long standing.
Much depends on the hereditary and educational bias of the in-
dividual. If the addict’s nervous system is not primarily too un-
stable, and if addiction is not complicated by any other incur-
able pathology, there is always the possibility of withdrawal of
the drug; and a reasonable probability that the “cure” will be
permanent, tmless environmental stress should become excess-
ive.
But in reality, few men or women become confirmed addicts
unless they have a psychopathic twist to begin with; and it
should be axiomatic to say that there is small probability of be-
ing able to make over such a personality on a better model than
nature provided in the first place. On the other hand, if cir-
266
Some Practical Suggestions 267
cumstances permit a somewhat sheltered life, environmental
stress being minimized, the balance between stress and resist-
ance may not be broken down. And of course a case in which
addiction developed because of a painful malady may hope for
permanent relief if the painful malady should be eradicated.
In a word, each case is a law unto itself. But there is one rule
that applies to every case of addiction that has reached a chronic
stage — the time element is a prime essential in considering
treatment. Sudden “cures” by abrupt stoppage or brief substitu-
tion are not cures at all, and should never be so considered. The
term of any curative treatment worthy of the name is a period
of many months, not to say years. Every cell in the body is in-
volved. The change is like the transfer of a marine creature to
fresh water. Only by slow gradations can such a transfer be
ejected with safety or with hope of making the new environ-
ment liveable.
My own mei;hod of the elder day^«*d?the only method that
gives the slightest chance of success when the patient is not con-
fined, is a method of slow withdrawal, over a term of many
months, with substitution of non-narcotic stimulants (strych-
nine, caffeine, quinine) and props to the blood-forming mecha-
nism (in recent times, non-specific proteins, chiefly of vegetable
origin, called proteals).
The patient at no time must have knowledge of what he is
taking; and the narcotic, withdrawn by almost infinitesimal
stages, must have been altogether absent for many weeks be-
fore the patient is made aware that it has been totally with-
drawn. Mental hygiene and moral support are important fac-
tors. Needless to say, you must have the patient’s full coopera-
tion from the outset. But as to this, there is no difficulty. The
intelligent patient is all eagerness to be free from thraldom. It
would obviously be mere folly to undertake treatment other-
wise.
Drug Addicts Are Human Beings
wkat^jf lJie tens of thousands of addicts who have
complicating maladies, or whose addiction is of such long stand-
ing as to preclude all probability of successful permanent with-
drawal of the drug !" * '
There are thousands of these who might have been cured had
it been possible to give them rational treatment during the early
years of their infirmity— iftdiiding.maiiy boys the-
who became addicts through use of opiates in trench or hospitaL^
But the Code of the narcotic tax agents had so terrorized the
profession that no wise physician dared treat them in home or
office, and there were not hospital beds available for one in fifty
of the addicts in need of treatment.
The Government in whose service*^ tiwfMiBd becom^addicts,
now condemned them to permanent addiction.
What is to be done for these hopeless incurables.? The an-
swer is not difficult. Their case is simply that of thousands of
diabetics who must continue all their lives to take insulin daily;
and of other thousands of myxedema cases who must always
take thyroid extract. There is nothing more appalling about
one case than about the others.
In each case, it is merely a matter of finding out what dosage
of drug is required to keep the system “in balance,” and con-
tinuing to supply the need. To deny thd addict the right to se-
cure legally and at minimum cost the medicine he needs, is pfe-
cisely as logical, as humane, and as just as to require a goiter sub-
ject to pay a dollar a tablet for thyroid extract, or the diabetic
to pay one hundred times its valid price for insulin; — with the
added proviso that either sick person is to be pronounced a felon
if he is caught purchasing the drug at all.
But why revert to the past ? Why, indeed, except that when
these lines are written, it is not past but present ^at one' refers
to. The goiter patient may, indeed, secure liis thyroid ‘extract
legally and at nominal cost; the diabetic may secure insulin un-
Some Practical Suggestions 269
der sanction of law. But the addict is denied legal access to his
medicament, and in actuality is named felon if he is found to
have purchased it, at a hundred times its normal cost, at the only
available source.
But enough of that. The time is at hand — it must be at hand
— when the orgy of bureaucratic sadism will end; when reason
and law will prevail in America, as they now prevail (as to the
handling of narcotic drugs) in every other civilized land.
So it will not be long before the incurable addict, once more
recognized as a human being, will be able to seek medical aid,
and to receive the attention of skilled physicians, like every
other sick man in the world.
Then the result will be that the sick man, tested by compe-
tent experts as to the quantity of narcotic needed to keep him
in balance — ^precisely as diabetic and myxedemic are tested —
will be “rationed,” and enabled to secure the drug at minimum
cost, as openly and legitimately as the other incurables receive
their insulin, their thyroid extract, or any other medicament
their infirmity demands— or as the nicotine addict gets his to-
bacco.
When that day comes — and I repeat that it must come soon
— the last of the Dark Age superstitions will have been ban-
ished, and an American will at last be able to hold his head
erect in a group of civilized people of other nations.
But not till then.
appendix
75th Congress, 3d Session
H. J. RES. 642
IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
April 7, 1938
Mr. Coffee of Washington introduced the following joint resolu-
tion; which was referred to the Committee on Interstate and
Foreign Commerce and ordered to be printed
JOINT RESOLUTION
To provide for a survey of the narcotic-drug conditions in the
United States by the United States Public Health Service.
Whereas no survey has been made of the narcotic-drug situation
in the United States since the one made by Congress in
1919 that can be considered as accurate as that one; and
Whereas our Federal Narcotic Bureau announces annually that
the number of addicted persons is not more than one
hundred and twenty thousand; that the number of addicts
is neither increasing nor decreasing; and
Whereas a recent survey made by the State of Washington dis-
closes the number of three thousand five hundred addicted
citizens as against the number of three hundred and fifty as
reported by the Federal Narcotic Bureau; and
Whereas this survey also discloses that two hundred and fifty
new cases of addiction are uncovered by law-enforcement
departments each year, while the deaths recorded do not
exceed fifty addicts each year; and
Whereas the citizens of the United States are now declared to be
the largest consumers of licit and illicit morphine in the
world, and the situation in the State of Washington is no
different, proportionately, than that of other States; and
371
72 Appendix
Whereas the lack of knowledge regarding this great menace in
all its phases is appalling; and
Whereas at a congressional hearing held last year on the question
of mandatory sentences for repeated violations of Feder^
narcotic laws a representative of the Federal Narcotic
Bureau said, “Narcotic law violators, like all other mer-
chants, licit and illicit, are continuously endeavoring to
broaden their market,” a direct admission by the Depart-
ment itself that the illicit industry in narcotic drugs is in-
creasing and that the number of addicts must be increasing:
Therefore be it
Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives
of the United States of America in Congress assembled.
That the Surgeon General of the United States Public Health
Service, under the supervision of the Secretary of the
Treasury, is authorized and directed to conduct, through the
facilities of the Public Health Service, an investigation and
survey of the conditions in the United States existing now
and during the past twenty-five years with respect to the
importation, production, distribution, and use of narcotics, in
order to secure full information as to (a) the extent of unlaw-
ful activities with respect to narcotics, and the number of per-
sons connected with such activities; (b) the extent of addic-
tion to the use of narcotics in the several States and Terri-
tories, the number of addicts therein, the causes of addiction,
the availability and use of various kinds of treatment, and
other related matters; and (c) the conditions and trends
with respect to the prevalence of evils arising from narcotics,
with a view to aiding Congress to enact laws, and aiding
the law-enforcing agencies to administer the laws, so as to
properly protect the people from such evils. The Surgeon
General shall report the results of such investigation and
survey, together with a compilation of the supporting data
and statistics, and his recommendations for legislation or
other action by the United States, to the Congress of the
United States and to the President, not later than
Sec. 2. For the purpose of carrying out this resolution
the United States Public Health Service is authorized ^ to
cooperate with the States, Territories, and municipalities,
and with any public and private agencies interested in the
narcotic problems, and, with the consent of such State, mu-
nicipality, or agency, to utilize any services or facilities made
Appendix
273
available by such State, municipality, or agency. Every
officer and employee of the United States is authorized to
supply the Public Health Service with such information relat-
ing to the investigation and survey authorized by this resolu-
tion and contained in the records of such officer and employee
as the Public Health Service may request.
Sec. 3. There are hereby authorized to be appropriated
such sums as may be necessary to carry out the provisions
of this resolution.
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